At heart as straight as the flight of an arrow: MARTIN POLLACK

He had known for a long time that his cancer was incurable. “But it doesn’t matter,” he wrote in a letter. He continued to console me. “It’s possible to live with it, just not sure how long. I'm not particularly worried about it, but I can't really plan a trip to you…” “With me everything is the same as before, well, maybe a little worse... but that's nothing.”

It was the first year of Borderland's existence. Phone call. “My name is Martin Pollack. I am a correspondent for ‘Spiegel.’ I would like to come to Sejny, write about you...”

We have often talked about Mihail Sebastians Diary. “How is it possible that intellectuals like Eliade allowed themselves to be seduced by fascism?” At the time, he didn’t yet know about the seduced within his own family circle and that the question “how is it possible?” would not leave him for the rest of his life, that while searching for an answer to it he would write several books, including perhaps the best of them, Death in the Bunker. The Story of My Father.

“Let’s meet at Café Sperl.” In the early 1990s, Vienna became a stop for me on frequent trips to the former Yugoslavia. There was a war going on. Martin gave part of his apartment to refugees from Bosnia. At a table in a café he had his office. The waitress brought him not only fresh press from the world, but also private correspondence. The table was marble, so with a clatter Melange, a glass of water and Apfelstrudel appeared on it. After I finished the story of my trip with Tadeusz Mazowiecki to Tuzla and Mostar, Martin opened the historical parenthesis for a moment: “At one of these tables sat General Hötzendorf, Chief of the General Staff, who was the first to rush to war with Serbia after the assassination in Sarajevo in 1914. And before that, the founders of Viennese Art Nouveau had their table here. In this café, military men and artists did not disturb each other.” Martin had something of Sperl’s traditional elegance about him. However, he was wary as hell of Austrian crotchetiness (in Polish and some other Slavic languages krotochwilność), dangerous because it manifests itself—like bipolar disease—with perpetual relapses. “If you have succumbed to the charms of this café,” he once told me on my way out, “don't forget that one of its owners was named Kratochwil.”

I visited him in Bocksdorf, a house wrapped in vines and an old garden, in the heart of Burgenland, near the border with Hungary. Throughout the night, he told me the story of the Nazi father he had just discovered. “Extremely fanatical, violent, ready for anything,”—he quoted from the files of police pursuing war criminals. “It’s good that you stopped by. It’s hard to bear this alone...” The voice of an extremely good-natured man reached me. Not long ago, he sent me an appeal: “We want a Europe of freedom and peace. Instead, nationalism is coming to the fore. Intolerance  spreading. Hatred is becoming louder, violence is entering everyday life. Fear of the other, the foreign, is stoked and turned into political capital. The cry for a strong hand resounds. Corruption is undermining the foundations of societies. There is an erosion of the rule of law. Social achievements and hard-won rights are threatened. Freedom and peace are no longer taken for granted. The time is coming to send a signal!” “You know yourself whether to sign or not”—he added. When signing then, I was thinking of Europe. Today I’m thinking of Martin. He was like that appeal—at heart as straight as the flight of an arrow.

Your identity, Mr. Pollack? Freedom.
Who do you stand for? For solidarity.
How do you live? In truth.
Martin...

Krzysztof Czyżewski is a Polish author and one of the initiators of the Borderland Foundation in Sejny.