Video Discription |
To ostatnia niedziela (It's The Last Sunday) (Petersburski /Friedwald) - Zygmunt Piotrowski z ork. Syrena-Rekord, Melodja-Electro 1935 (Polish)
NOTE: Melodja-Electro was a dime store version of Syrena-Electro (the record's price was only 1,5 zl) and many artists disagreed to present their names on the cheaper label (Adam Aston, Mieczysław Fogg, Hanka Ordonówna). Many others were nicknamed or mentioned merely as "refrain singer" (e.g. Tadeusz Faliszewski's label name for Melodja- Electro was Jan Pobóg; Wiera Gran recorded as Mariol).
"To ostatnia niedziela" belongs to one of the most famous tangoes of prewar Poland (ex-aequo with "Oh Donna Clara", which was also composed by Jerzy Petersburski, in 1928) and ofcourse, it was immediately recorded by great stars like Mieczysław Fogg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-hg58QQmdc , Adam Aston or Chór Dana. Here, it is performed by Zygmunt Piotrowski, who in years 1930-32 was the member of Chór Wiehlera revellers' group, to join later another very popular Polish revellers - Chór Juranda, as their first tenor. He also recorded for Cristal-Electro in a duet with R. Marrot (Duet "Corda" see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D5Wq1qjZeY ). He was a modest and little known singer, who most of his life worked as streetcar operator in Warsaw, and who died of tuberculosis during the German occupation of Poland.
The illustration to this sad tango is the set of the melancholic views of towns and villages of "Polish Atlantis" - the lost forever universe of Polskie Kresy Wschodnie (Polish East Borderlands)...
Polish Kresy (Polskie Kresy) is the term referred to Polish eastern territories that belonged to Poland before 1939 (The Voivodeships of Lwów, Stanisławów, Tarnopol, Volhynia, Wilno, Nowogródek) and after 1939, due to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, on September 17, 1939 the territory was annexed by the Soviet Union, and a significant part of the ethnic Polish population of the eastern Kresy (over 1,5 million Polish citizens) was deported to other areas of the Soviet Union including Siberia and Kazakhstan. During the Teheran Conference in 1943, a new Soviet-Polish border was established on the so-called Curzon-line, in effect sanctioning most of the Soviet territorial acquisitions from September 1939 and ignoring protests from the Polish emigre government in London. Soviet Union incorporated Polish Kresy into the Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania, and 50 years later when the Soviet Union broke up, they remained part of those respective republics after they gained independence.
Before September 1939 the population of the Kresy was multi-ethnic, primarily comprising Poles, Ukrainians and Belarusians. Poles formed the largest ethnic group in these regions, and were demographically the largest ethnic group in the region's cities. Other national minorities included Lithuanians (in the north), Jews (scattered in cities and towns across the area), Czechs (in Volhynia), and also Russians. Mother language given in 1931 Polish census was following: Lwów Voivodeship: 58% Polish, 34% Ukrainian language , 8% Yiddish; in Vilno Voivodeship: 60% Polish, 23% Belarussian, 8% Yiddish, 3% Russian, 8% Other, including Lithuanian.
Now, the term "Kresy" remains for the most of Poles an imaginary place of Polish legends and of valorous deeds. The places of mystical Polish defenders of Western Europe - first against Tatar and Turkish invaders, and in the XXth Century - against the Bolshevik plague from Soviet Russia. The elite of Polish aristocracy and landowners had their enormous properties in Kresy, where, in their private kingdoms, the richest, the most magnificent renaissance or baroque palaces, churches, monasteries were built during long ages of the bloom of the Polish culture in that area. Also, the worldwide legend of "East-European Jewish shtetl" has its roots in the culture of the Polish Kresy. When one reads biographies of the great Jewish men of science, culture or the politics, often their birthplaces appear to be in Lwów, Wilno, Grodno, Stryj, Drohobycz Czortków, Buczacz, Kołomyja or in the hundreds of the Kresy towns and villages. Unfortunately - with some exceptions given to the bigger cities like Wilno or Lwów - a large part of the magnificent cultural heritage of the multi-age Polish presence in that area has not been restaured since the 2nd WW and predominantly, is left to decay. [iH1_ksC2hII] |