Beyond Beatlemania: How Poland Fell in Love with The Beatles

the-beatles-fot-united-archives-GettyImages-1262748668-MINIATURA.jpg, default, The Beatles: Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, 1967, photo: United Archives / Getty Images

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Who claimed the Beatles were a conspiracy concocted by aliens? What did Stanisław Lem think of the Liverpool lads? How did the Polish press describe their hairstyles? Here are the most fascinating Beatles-related stories in Polish culture.

‘Beatlemania story – how many years has it been?’ sang Irena Jarocka to lyrics by Janusz Kondratowicz. No matter how you count it, 63 years have now passed since those first waves of excitement. Even those who missed that frenzy must admit that, after the Beatles appeared, the world has never been the same again. Their influence on the history of music and 20th-century culture is undeniable. Poland, too, found itself within this sphere of influence. Although the Beatles never played a concert in Poland and obtaining their records during the communist era required considerable effort, they inspired, and continue to inspire, many Polish artists, not just musicians.

Artists working across a wide range of styles – including Lech Janerka, Ryszard Tymon Tymański, the musicians of Republika and Myslovitz, and Grzegorz Kwiatkowski of Trupa Trupa – have often spoken in interviews about the profound influence the Beatles had on their work. Polish covers of Beatles songs also span a wide range of musical genres. In 1984, Ewa Bem recorded an entire album of her own interpretations of their songs in jazz-funk arrangements (Ewa Bem Loves The Beatles). Stanisław Soyka covered Let It Be. The Novi Singers – accompanied by an impressive line-up including Tomasz Stańko, Zbigniew Seifert, Włodzimierz Nahorny and Zbigniew Namysłowski – took on The Fool on the Hill. Ścianka deconstructed Tomorrow Never Knows.

The lyrics of The Beatles’ songs captivated many Polish poets, songwriters and translators. Stanisław Barańczak’s translations are masterpieces of the art (three of them – When I’m 64, Rocky Raccoon and Maxwell’s Silver Hammer – were included in his Fioletowa Krowa (Purple Cow), an anthology of light-hearted English and American poetry). The Beatles’ lyrics were also translated by, among others, Agnieszka Osiecka, Maciej Zembaty, Tomasz Beksiński and Wojciech Mann. Lennon’s absurdist stories and humorous sketches were translated by Robert Stiller and Filip Łobodziński.

Maciej Hen, 'The Beatles in Poland', photo: Agora

Maciej Hen compiled the stories of Polish fans of the Fab Four in the book Beatlesi w Polsce (The Beatles in Poland), which we will refer to again later. Across five hundred pages, several dozen people recounted their experiences with the Beatles. Among the memories are the story of Katarzyna Gärtner, who met Lennon whilst on a scholarship at Abbey Road Studios in London, as well as accounts from fan club founders, collectors, and winners of the Wielka Gra quiz show, which tested knowledge of the Beatles. The book features people from different backgrounds and generations, since, after all, as Grzegorz Nawrocki sang with the band Kobiety:

Only the Beatles live on forever

The world is a better place with them

When aliens invade Earth,

‘Here Comes the Sun’, I’ll play them.

Shaggy Martians

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The Beatles at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London, 1963, photo: Central Press / Hulton Archive / Getty Images

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Perhaps, for all we know, aliens may already be familiar with their work, even though the Beatles’ songs were not included on the gold-plated discs launched into space as part of the Voyager programme in 1977. One of the programme’s initiators, Carl Sagan, wanted to include the track mentioned in the Kobiety song on these discs – and the band even approved of the idea – but the plan fell through because of mundane earthly copyright laws. Instead, rock and roll is represented there by Chuck Berry. However, the very appearance of the Beatles on planet Earth could have been an alien conspiracy, as suggested by a certain Polish science fiction short story.

Andrzej Czechowski’s The Beatles, published in the collection Przybysze (The Comers) (1967), opens with a Beatles concert at Warsaw’s Congress Hall – an intriguing alternative history in itself (though already outdated by the time the book was published: by 1967, the Beatles were no longer touring, having entered a phase of psychedelic flights, transcendental meditation and studio experiments, rather than singing ‘ye-ye’). After the concert, Czechowski writes, a crowd of teenagers broke through the police cordons and stormed the dressing room, where it turned out that John, Paul, George and Ringo were perfectly constructed androids.

The Beatles’ heads contained high-performance radio receivers; the diaphragm’s deflection was modulated by an additional device – the Beatles’ mouths moved in harmony with the diaphragm’s movements (the design of the mechanisms controlling facial movements and changes in facial expression was among the most interesting aspects of the robots’ construction). […] Thanks to special sensors inside the Beatles, the operator had an accurate picture of how all the robots’ mechanisms were functioning at all times. After examining the memory tapes stored in the operator’s microcomputer, experts concluded that there had never been a loss-of-control incident.

The revelation sparked an international scandal. The Beatles turned out not to be the only pop-music androids – Italian singer Marino Marini and vocalist Brenda Lee, among others, were soon exposed as well. A wave of fear gripped the chart-topping stars – they did everything they could to prove they were flesh and blood. The Interpol investigation led to a conclusion straight out of The X-Files (had that famous series, of course, already existed in the 1960s). The key to the mystery was an engineer using a false identity, whose trail went cold in the Amazon jungle; local people reported seeing unidentified flying objects above the spot where he disappeared. Everything, therefore, pointed to the conclusion that extraterrestrial technology had been used in the construction of the Beatles. As one of the experts on the robotics committee said off the record:

[I]f the Martians’ intention is to harm us, which is quite likely, given their secretive nature, then rock and roll is, in some sense, harmful to humans, and we should therefore seek to eliminate it altogether. There is also an alternative possibility: that they wish to study collective reactions in this way.

Incidentally, the Beatles did not seem to have a good reputation in Polish science fiction circles at the time. Stanisław Lem wrote to Sławomir Mrożek in the 1960s: ‘As for the Beatles, I’d gladly pluck out all their dishevelled hair – I’ve got the least grudge against them, because they’re doing it for the money, they’ve said so clearly, but the whole youth has gone moronic, and it looks terrifying.’ However, in later interviews, he admitted that, thanks to his son, he had come to like some of their songs. Tomasz Lem confirmed this in Awantury na Tle Powszechnego Ciążenia (Disputes over the Universal Gravitation), writing about his father’s fondness for the songs from the film The Yellow Submarine.

And, returning to the Martian intrigue, many conspiracy theories and urban legends about the Beatles circulate beyond the realm of literature. As early as 1969, the magazine Przekrój published an article discussing one of them, concerning the alleged death of Paul McCartney in a car crash and his replacement by a lookalike. Encrypted messages and clues confirming this tragic news were said to be found on album covers and in the band’s songs. This legend was given a new lease of life in the Internet age. And it was not the only one. Leszek Możdżer recently spoke in an interview about how Beatlemania was supposedly a staged spectacle of the Cold War era, part of a larger plan to influence society, with the Beatles themselves and the teenagers fainting at the sight of them being merely actors.

The Piastles

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The Beatles, from the left: Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, George Harrison, 1964, UK, photo: Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images

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The mere appearance of the Beatles outside the Palace of Culture in the 1960s would surely have caused a stir comparable to a flying saucer landing – a comparison that, incidentally, recurs in accounts of the Rolling Stones’ concert in Warsaw. Another interesting anecdote from the world of speculative history is the popular legend that the authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland considered organising a Beatles concert in Częstochowa as part of the celebrations for the Millennium of the Polish State, which could have overshadowed the Church’s celebrations of the anniversary of Poland’s baptism. Negotiations had even begun with the band’s management, but someone in the upper echelons sensibly pointed out that ensuring the safety of attendees at two events of such a scale could prove problematic. Ultimately, Czerwone Gitary played at the rival event on 3 May 1966. The echoes of Beatlemania intersected with the fervour of the celebrations marking the millennium of the Polish state in the charming song Piastelsi (The Piastles) by the band Dzikusy: ‘Every one of you knows that we wear [...] hair as long as Piast the wheelwright used to wear.’

Much like Polish science fiction literature, the press under the communist regime in Poland was initially bewildered by this new musical phenomenon. Articles from the 1960s about the Beatles used epithets such as ‘a series of throaty growls’, ‘the roar of atavistic barbarism’ or ‘musical misery’, prompting indignant letters from young readers to the editor. Simply finding information about one’s favourite band was a challenge in itself. In Beatlesi w Polsce, the theme of wandering the local Ruch newspaper kiosks in search of an issue of the Beatles-themed magazine Brytania, published by the British Embassy, recurs several times.

Although the release of The White Album (1968) received an enthusiastic review in Sztandar Młodych, many readers still had to imagine what the music sounded like. Beatles records were not available through official distribution channels for a long time (it was not until 1978 that the first domestic release of their music appeared – a double maxi-single by Tonpress). Those born under a lucky star had access to Western releases. For the majority, the only options were to record songs from the radio or to rely on the pirate circulation of sound postcards.

Although the Beatles were absent from official circulation, they still strongly influenced the Polish music scene of the 1960s and 1970s. The most creative development of musical ideas borrowed from the Beatles (as with the Beach Boys) in the big-beat (Polish name for rock and roll) scene can probably be found in Skaldowie’s music – you just need to listen to all those flutes, strings and other ideas that go beyond the standard guitar-bass-drums set-up. But the list of big-beat bands and stage stars at the time who covered the quartet’s songs is much longer. The live recording of I’m Down by Czerwone Gitary reveals a lesser-known, more garage-rock side of the Polish band. The Nowa Huta-based band Szwagry adapted two tracks from the Beatles’ repertoire with lyrics by Wiesław Dymny: She’s a Woman (as Wesele [The Wedding]) and Twist and Shout (as Hura Huba):

Those who know how to move

Won’t be forced to dance

Because ‘huba’ is a polypore that grows on a tree trunk

But you can also dance the ‘Huba’ to this rhythm

Niemen performed A Hard Day’s Night with the Niebiesko-Czarni; the Trubadurzy then covered the same song – at a slower tempo and with Polish lyrics (‘then you’ll cut me some bread, and I’ll smile again, and all my dark thoughts will fade away’).

The Alibabki, accompanied by the Tajfuns, sang Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da (also in Polish), whilst Halina Kunicka, in a duet with Krystyna Konarska, turned Michelle into Michał. This was not the only time Kunicka found her feet with Lennon-McCartney compositions: with Bohdan Łazuka, she asked Czy Chcesz Poznać Tajemnicę? (a Polish version of Do You Want to Know a Secret?), and performed a solo version of the Polish-language Girl. Meanwhile, Let It Be, performed by Maryla Rodowicz, is titled Raz po Raz.

The Beatles’ music also appeared in some surprising contexts. A snippet of the song Yellow Submarine was used in the jingle for a morning exercise programme on Polish Radio. The interviewees in Maciej Hen’s book Beatlesi w Polsce also recall eagerly awaiting the appearance of their songs in the television series Crime Theatre Kobra.

Another interesting titbit from the ‘Beatles-related Polish trivia’ category is an interview with the Beatles, broadcast in 1964 on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Zielona Fala programme. Reporters Henryk Rozpędowski and Józef Ptaczek spoke to them on the set of A Hard Day’s Night. In the broadcast, Ringo sings an imaginary ‘Polish song’, and all four of them – after a brief Polish lesson – send their regards to listeners in Poland.

Marvellous Beatle boot

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Niebiesko-Czarni. Pictured: Zbigniew Podgajny, Mirosław Polarek, Wiesław Żakowicz, Ada Rusowicz, Krzysztof Potocki, Wojciech Korda, Tadeusz Głuchowski and Janusz Popławski, 1969, photo: Marek Karewicz / courtesy of SQN Publishing

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Niebiesko-Czarni, na zdjęciu: Zbigniew Podgajny, Mirosław Polarek, Wiesław Żakowicz, Ada Rusowicz, Krzysztof Potocki, Wojciech Korda, Tadeusz Głuchowski, Janusz Popławski, 1969, fot. Marek Karewicz / dzięki uprzejmości wydawnictwa SQN

The Beatles also left their mark on 1960s fashion in Poland. Let us start at the top – that is, the head. The Beatles’ hairstyles were a subject to which Polish commentators on the British phenomenon devoted disproportionate attention. In 1964, the speaker of Polska Kronika Filmowa (Polish Film Chronicle), reporting on the Beatles’ concert at the Olympia in Paris, said: ‘They may be likeable and musical, but they made their careers not on their voices, but on their hair – with that “dumb Johnny” hairstyle.’ In a column by the Rojek Sisters (the pseudonym of Mira Michałowska) published in Przekrój that same year, we could read such revelations: ‘the sight of these four is quite terrifying. None of them has been to the hairdresser’s for four years, and they look like Neanderthals in black leather jackets and black jeans.’

The young people, however, had their own ideas and paid no heed to the media establishment’s statements. At that time, Niemen sang with the Niebiesko-Czarni:

Don’t be such a Beatle, says Dad to me

And Mum, being Mum, calls after me: Go to the hairdresser’s!

Because the hairdresser is after you with a pair of scissors.

Get that shag cut at last, shame on you, son, shame on you!

And I say to Dad: Dad, you’re so behind the times,

Dad doesn’t even know that’s the fashion today

And as for Mum, that’s the sort of mum we have,

She’s never heard a thing about the Liverpool lads.

In one episode of the Wojna Domowa (Household War) TV series, Paweł’s father offers him a ticket to a rock and roll concert in exchange for a visit to the hairdresser’s. In another episode, Paweł and Anula form the beat band Kocmołuchy and, with their hit Tylko Wróć (Just Come Back), whose lyrics are by Wojciech Młynarski, try their hand at a competition under the banner ‘Polish Youth Sing Polish Songs’.

I’m so down, I’m so sad, I’m so blue

Every day drags on like spaghetti

That day, it was raining, it was foggy, and a bit of drizzle

You got wet, I got wet,

The jackdaws in the trees got wet

Two pairs of ‘ye ye’ stockings got wet

And my marvellous Beatle boot has fallen apart

But the worst thing, I suppose, is that

Your parents won’t let you go out any more

I’m so down, I’m so sad, I’m so blue.

I’m so down, I’m so sad, I’m so small

Cats and dogs are grey, the days too are grey

At school, I got loads of fails on the potato beetle

One shoemaker, the one that you know

Is now making the Beatle boots in the Rolling Stones style.

As we read, one of the laments the poem’s speaker is that his ‘Beatle boot has fallen apart’ – a line deciphered many years later by Adam Halber in the magazine Angora: ‘So we have a ‘Beatle boot’ that’s going a bit out of fashion, because ‘one shoemaker, the one that you know, is now making Beatle boots in the Rolling Stones style.’ Every young Warsaw lad knew that if you wanted Beatle boots, you went to Śliwka on Marszałkowska, and the shoemaker, the one that you know, was called Beczek and had his workshop on Aleje Jerozolimskie. Writing in that style was a sensation back then.

We find brief references to Beatles-style fashion in other works for young people from that era. For example, in Adam Bahdaj’s Stawiam na Tolka Banana (I am Betting on Tolek Banan), there is a boy nicknamed ‘The Beatles’: ‘He was a fifteen-year-old lad dressed in the style of the famous Beatles: black trousers, Chelsea boots, a tweed jacket with wide stripes, and a lace and ruffled collar under his chin.’

The Fab Four’s stage outfits also influenced the image of Poland’s own big-beat stars. In his book Beatlesi w Polsce, Maciej Hen recounts how Andrzej Zieliński of Skaldowie told him that the neon uniforms on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band inspired them to dress up in bullfighter costumes borrowed from the theatre. Hen writes that more such references can be found: ‘there is no doubt that it was the operetta-style uniforms from Sgt. that emboldened the Trubadurzy to dress up as musketeers, and the members of No To Co to dress up in the braided liveries of hajduks’.

Far away from Liverpool

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John Lennon Street in Warsaw, photo: Mateusz Włodarczyk / Forum

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Aesthetic influences were not limited to fashion; they were also evident in design. For example, the cover of Niebiesko-Czarni’s first LP (designed by Marek Karewicz, the leading figure behind the visual identity of Polish beat music) references the iconic photograph on the cover of With The Beatles.

Also worth noting are the Polish posters advertising films starring The Beatles, designed by Waldemar Świerzy (A Hard Day’s Night – released in Poland simply as The Beatles) and Eryk Lipiński (Help! – known in Polish cinemas as Na Pomoc!). The huge impact these films had on young Polish audiences at the time was attested to by Paweł Pawlikowski, director of Ida and Zimna Wojna (Cold War), who ranked A Hard Day’s Night first on his list of 10 favourite films compiled for the ‘Criterion Collection’. He recounted:

I saw it when I was seven, and it has stayed with me ever since. I loved the Beatles [...], so when the film was showing at the Moskwa cinema in Warsaw, I queued for half a day and managed to get in. The plot didn’t make much sense, but it was a dazzling experience. I vividly remember the energy, the gags, the striking black-and-white cinematography, and, above all, the music. It’s a film built around music, which was something completely new to me then.

The murder of John Lennon in 1980 reignited interest in The Beatles in Poland. During the 1980s, fan clubs dedicated to the band sprang up across the country, including in Warsaw, Kraków and Lublin. In 1983, the pop-rock band Universe (whose name was taken from the song Across the Universe, written by Lennon) performed the sentimental ballad Mr Lennon at the Opole Festival, winning second prize in the Promocje competition.

In 1987, the psychological drama Śmierć Johna L. (The Death of John L), directed by Tomasz Zygadło, was released in Polish cinemas. Its protagonist is the leader of a popular band (played by Wojciech Wysocki; the film is also notable for cameo appearances by Grzegorz Turnau and Maciej Maleńczuk), whose rock-and-roll lifestyle has brought him to the brink of an existential crisis. In his lonely moments at home, he delivers monologues to a portrait of his youth idol, John Lennon.

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A still from the set of the film ‘Yesterday’, directed by Radosław Piwowarski. In the photograph: Waldemar Ignaczak as George (4R), Robert Piechota as Paul (3R), Andrzej Zieliński as John (2R) and Piotr Siwkiewicz as Paweł Ringo Mitura (R). Photo: Krzysztof Wellman / PAP

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However, the most significant Beatles-themed film in 1980s Poland is Yesterday, Radosław Piwowarski’s feature-length debut (1985). It is a nostalgic tale of teenagers coming of age in a small town ‘far away from Liverpool’ in the mid-1960s. They form a band and not only play Beatles covers but also identify themselves with the Beatles, adopting their names as stage names. However, youthful passion and first love – that of the main character, Ringo (Piotr Siwkiewicz), for Ania (Anna Kaźmierczak) – clash with the oppressive nature of the education system, the family and the Church.

In the context of actual attempts to impose top-down control over rock and roll energy (as exemplified by efforts to blend big-beat with folk-inspired music), one of the film’s final scenes is particularly intriguing. The band, now reduced in number, plays at the school-leavers’ ball. Ringo is not with them; he has been replaced by the hated PE teacher, Biegacz (Krzysztof Majchrzak), who had previously bullied them. The group, which is no longer called The Crazy Boys but Słowianie 65, performs Love Me Do with Polish lyrics written by Biegacz that align with the communist-era cult of udarnik work – the Soviet ideal of the hyper-productive, model worker.

The film also features many details that faithfully capture the experiences of young people passionate about new music during the Gomułka era: listening with reverence to a sound postcard featuring the song And I Love Her, homemade contraptions to improve reception of the jammed-out Radio Luxembourg, or a drum kit made by Zygmunt Szpaderski – the stuff of dreams at a time when Western equipment was unattainable.

McCartney vs. Moczar

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The Beatles posters in a teenage girl’s room, Warsaw, 1981, photograph from the series Zapis Socjologiczny (Sociological Record), photo: Zofia Rydet / PAP

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The Beatles continued to appear in books published decades after the dust of Beatlemania had settled, often in the context of intergenerational conflict and misunderstanding. In Noelka, one of the volumes of Małgorzata Musierowicz’s Jeżycjada series, set in the early 1990s, a modern doorbell plays the tune of Yesterday, which infuriates Grandpa Metody, who blames the Beatles for ‘introducing a fashion for drugs and effeminacy’.

Zofia Chądzyńska’s psychological novel for young adults, Dorosnąć (Growing Up), published in 1987, offers a completely different perspective. The narrator is a doctor approaching middle age, a representative of the post-war baby-boom generation, and the father of a teenage son. The soundtrack of his adolescence and first love was The Beatles’ songs. To him, their music is the very embodiment of goodness, beauty and truth – in stark contrast to his son’s idols, who are ‘convulsively contorted, strumming their strings, with hair like savages and the eyes of drug addicts’. He complains about new fashions and fails to understand the phenomena of contemporary youth culture (‘I bet if I say “Madonna”, you’ll think of the Virgin Mary,’ his wife chides him as she tries to keep up with their child’s interests). He does, however, recognise in his own attitude a repetition of the pattern he faced two decades earlier, when he suffered for having long hair and a fascination with the hippie movement.

In Niekłamane Oblicze Jana Piszczyka (The True Face of Jan Piszczyk) (1990) – the final volume of Jerzy Stefan Stawiński’s trilogy devoted to the fortunes of this opportunist and ill-fated man – the title character attempts, through the Beatles, to forge a bond with his teenage daughter, unaware that he is her father. He goes to great lengths to obtain a copy of the Yellow Submarine album for her from London. This delights the girl but angers her mother, who cannot stand that her daughter plays it on repeat. Piszczyk then tries to play the generational conflict card: ‘You don’t understand young people, Renata. You grew up on ZMP mass songs and can’t fathom how anyone could dance to such ideology-free tunes’.

Beatles-themed motifs recur across many novels by authors who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s. In Joanna Szczepkowska’s novel Kocham Paula McCartneya (I Love Paul McCartney) (2008), as the title suggests, there are numerous references to Beatles songs. In one scene, four teenage girls from Warsaw’s Ochota district draw lots to decide which Beatle they will worship and write his name in their notebooks and on the stairwells. The ritual is preceded by an ecstatic dance to the rhythm of Rock’n’Roll Music:

Just a moment ago, there was a witches’ sabbath here […] just a moment ago, the girls were jumping on the sofa […] just like those girls, the girls abroad […] Apparently, in London, one of the girls gouged out her own eye whilst in a trance. […] Gertrude arches her back, a hysterical arch, silent ecstasy, convulsions beneath the skin.

In Daniel Wyszogrodzki’s Plac Leński (Leński Square) (2021), the Beatles craze is set against the backdrop of a boy’s experiences growing up at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s in Warsaw’s Praga district: from the impression made on him by a song by a then-unknown band heard at a summer camp on Lake Balaton, through his search for their music, to the purchase of his first foreign record at a flea market in Mariensztat – an Indian edition of Abbey Road.

In Antoni Libera’s Madame (1998), the Skowyczące Pantery band plays at the school-leavers’ ball, and their repertoire includes Beatles covers. The novel’s protagonist is not particularly interested in this, as he is preoccupied with matters of the heart. Besides, he prefers jazz and aspires to be an intellectual, and he consents with his friend, who, at the sight of his enthusiastic peers, says: ‘What a circus’. At one point, however, the French teacher he is in love with asks him to dance – the rock band is playing a slow number, Yesterday. The young man, flustered by the situation, tries to play the cynic: ‘Doesn’t this reek of kitsch? [...] [T]his sweet dance of ours against the backdrop of these sweet words,’ he asks her. She, however, brings him back down to earth: ‘Kitsch can be nice. There’s no need to renounce it. If there were no kitsch, there would be no great art.’ The opening bars of another song from the Liverpool band’s repertoire, Ticket to Ride, begin; its lyrics would prove prophetic for their future – the very next day, his beloved would leave by train from Gdańsk Station to undertake an internship in France.

In the novel Grupy na Wolnym Powietrzu (Outdoor Groups) (1995) by Eli Barbur, who was forced to emigrate in the wake of the anti-Semitic witch-hunt of 1968, there is a reference to a student party where the song We Can Work It Out is accompanied by dancing and weeping. The Beatles also intersect with the darkness of Moczar’s totalitarianism in Tratwa z Pomarańczami (The Raft with Oranges) (2025), an autobiographical novel by Maciej Hen. In one passage, the protagonist – despondent after learning that his friend will have to leave the country – finds hope and comfort when he hears Hey Jude on the BBC. The scene in which the protagonist first encounters the Liverpool band’s music during a music lesson is also interesting. To liven up one of the last days before the summer holidays – instead of going over Umiłowany Kraj (Beloved Country) or other school assembly favourites – the teacher played Rock and Roll Music for the Year 5 pupils. As Hen writes: ‘It was like a previously unknown powerful current breaking a hole in the dam.’

Translated from Polish by Agnieszka Mistur

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