AC: People returning to Warsaw in large numbers in January 1945 and immediately started reconstruction work and tried to make the some of the demolished buildings liveable. How did this relate to BOS’s works? Did it generate conflicts? How common was the idea that ‘the entire nation is building its capital’?
GP: Above all, it has to be stressed that the mass return of people to Warsaw, literally days after the liberation of January 1945, was an unprecedented event. The practically non-existent city attracted crowds of people. These were former citizens who came back looking for their homes and relatives, but also looters – thousands of civilians living near Warsaw made numerous trips into the ruins in search of useful things in the rubble. People said that there was an ‘age of looting’ in Warsaw right after the liberation, because everybody was stealing back then. State institutions did it in an official capacity, as was within their rights. In order to start their operations, BOS took coal from basements and window-glass and furniture from local tenement houses during the first weeks of its operation.
You could say that in order to jumpstart the capital, such legalised looting had to be undertaken countrywide. The propaganda slogan that ‘the entire nation builds its capital’ describes not only the warm feelings towards Warsaw, but also an unfortunate necessity. Warsaw was the most destroyed city in the country – it claimed 30% of the volume of damages and more than half of their value! Since rebuilding Warsaw as the seat of the state authorities was a priority, some contributions, gifts for Warsaw were needed. From today’s perspective, it’s easy to criticise the fact that districts of many cities in the West of the country were not rebuilt after the war, because their bricks were used to rebuild the capital. But we must remember, that already in the winter of 1945, there were tens of thousands of people in Warsaw who had nowhere to live, while the former German cities were empty and were not attracting crowds of new inhabitants. Moreover, nobody had any emotional attachments to the architectural substance of those towns and their historical value wasn’t appreciated.
‘The entire nation was building its capital’ also in the sense that those returning to Warsaw spontaneously engaged in helping clear the rubble and tried to rebuild on their own. BOS wasn’t always happy with this situation, as some parts of the centre were supposed to have been radically reconstructed – they were treated as a blank canvas, but suddenly people appeared and began renovating houses that, in theory, weren’t supposed to exist anymore. BOS managed to remove a number of more or less destroyed tenement houses, especially after summer of 1945 when a series of construction accidents made it necessary to swiftly dispose of theoretically preserved but damaged buildings. However, life put a stop to these plans in some places. A good example are the tall tenement houses at the corner of Książęca Street and Nowy Świat, right near Trzech Krzyży Square. They were supposed to be demolished from the very beginning, because they obscured the view of Dom Partii from the southern part of the Trakt Królewski (Royal Route). They were temporarily preserved because such solid homes were useful in a destroyed city. As you can see, the preservation was successful – they’re still standing today and there’s probably no threat of them getting damaged.