‘I’M A UKRAINIAN. I’M A POLE’
Micha³ Kubicki
Polish Radio External Service
artykul73216_Im_a_Ukrainian__Im_a_Pole_.html
Jan 9 2008
Poland
‘I’m a Ukrainian. I’m a Pole’ – billboards with captions of this kind
have appeared all over Warsaw and in several large Polish cities. The
campaign is part of an EU project ‘Equal opportunities for all’.
Hundreds of billboards have been put up in Warsaw, Gdansk on the
Baltic coast, the Silesian city of Katowice, £odz and several other
towns. They feature photographs of people of various walks of life and
various nationalities. They are all Polish citizens. On one there is
a middle-aged couple, a lawyer and a tourist agent. The caption reads
‘We are Armenians. We are Poles.’ The other shows Ania, a Polish
Jew who works as a dance teacher. The caption says: ‘I’m a Jew. I
am a Pole’. There are also billboards introducing Germans, Romanis,
Karaims and Ukrainians living in Poland.
Mike Urbaniak, who’s in charge of the campaign, explains its goals.
‘The main goal is to show to the Polish society that there are
actually ethnic and national minorities in our country. There’s a
need to get to know different minorities. Remember that we’ve joined
the Schengen zone, so there are no borders and people are travelling
freely. It’s very important to show to Poles that there are people
of different background and that they are a vital part of Polish and
European society.’
Most observers of the Polish scene agree that there is a need to
promote the concept of the so-called double national identity.
Stanislaw Janecki, editor of the weekly Wprost, welcomes the campaign
as a step towards preparing Poles for a multinational society.
‘I’m afraid we are too homogenous a society and Poles think that
there are no minorities. It’s a mistake because multicultural and
multinational society is developing fast. We will confront the great
wave of different ethnic groups because Poland is in the European
Union and will be open widely to minorities. It could cause a kind
of ethnic clash.’
The campaign has been devised by the Jewish community in Poland and is
a part of a wide-ranging ‘Equal opportunities’ project which involves
many EU countries. Mike Urbaniak again.
‘It was a huge programme introduced by the EU at the beginning of
2007. We planned to do this a few months ago but we had parliamentary
elections so we had to switch it off and we started our campaign at
the beginning of 2008.’
The campaign is held under the honorary patronage of Poland’s First
Lady Maria Kaczyñska.
–Boundary_(ID_qFwibY7hZzVQEdjqP3 oUZQ)–