Moral Panic: The Child Soldiers of the Warsaw Uprising

Stańczyk, Ewa

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-32262-5_4

Moral Panic: The Child Soldiers of the Warsaw Uprising

Ewa Stańczyk²

Chapter
First Online: 03 November 2019

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Abstract

This chapter explores narratives surrounding the figure of the child soldier, with a particular focus on the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. My discussion examines the tensions that are inherent to the portrayals of children in armed conflict and unpacks the taboos associated with the cultural constructions of childhood. The chapter points to the complex interaction between the enduring narratives of resistance and struggle for independence, which are characteristic of Poland, and the international humanitarian discourse tied to the use of children in war, which goes beyond the local context. My argument is that moral panic, which comes into light in recent criticism of the use of child soldiers in armed resistance, can be seen as an expression of contemporary liberal standpoint which rejects the traditional values of dying for one’s homeland.

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Notes

1.
I discussed this in more detail in an article on public debates surrounding children and sexuality in contemporary Poland. See Ewa Stańczyk, “Cartoon Characters, Equality Nurseries and Children’s ‘Best Interests’: On Childhood and Sexuality in Poland”, Sexualities 21/5–6 (2018): 809–824.
2.
Erich Goode and Ben-Yehuda Nachman, Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 2.
3.
Władysław Bartoszewski “Ludwik”, “The Warsaw Uprising : Facts and Afterthoughts”, Dialogue and Universalism 5–6 (2004): 25.
4.
See, for example, John Radzilowski, “Remembrance and Recovery: The Museum of the Warsaw Rising and the Memory of World War II in Post-Communist Poland”, The Public Historian 31/4 (2009): 144.
5.
Paris Principles, Principles and Guidelines on Children Associated with Armed Forces or Armed Groups, 7, http://www.unicef.org/emerg/files/ParisPrinciples310107English.pdf [accessed 9 March 2014].
6.
That is why they were often described by other insurgents as szczury kanałowe—the “sewer rats”.
7.
Jerzy Tomasz Świderski “Lubicz”, “Najmłodsi żołnierze Powstania 1944 r. Harcerski Pulton Lączników Btl. ‘Gustaw’”, in Jerzy Świderski (ed.), Harcerze 1944–1956. Najmłodsi w Powstaniu Warszawskim, drugiej konspiracji i więzieniach bezpieki (Warszawa: “ŁośGraf”, 2005), 59–61, 64.
8.
In November 1942, three different age groups were created within the organization. The oldest boys aged seventeen and over, formed the Assault Groups which, under occupation, took part in armed resistance. During the Warsaw Uprising its battalions, including Zośka and Parasol, gained a reputation as one of the best trained in the Home Army. Their younger colleagues, aged fifteen to seventeen, were part of the Combat Groups responsible for reconnaissance and communication. The last group, codenamed Zawisza after a Polish king from the Middle Ages, comprised children aged twelve to fourteen who were involved in auxiliary service such as intelligence work and carrying messages and goods. See, for example, Magdalena Chadaj, “Trzeba było, to się szło”, Nasza Polska 32 (2012): 14.
9.
Out of all Grey Ranks troops, it was inevitably the Assault Groups that suffered the greatest losses, on average 80% were killed on the front line. See Maria Wiśniewska “Malina”, “Pucia” and Jerzy Tomasz Świderski, “Harcerze w Powstaniu Warszawskim”, in Świderski, Harcerze 1944–1956, 36.
10.
This issue has only been examined in the context of the history of the Grey Ranks. See, for example, Jerzy Jabrzemski, Harcerze z Szarych Szeregów (Warszawa: PWN, 1997).
11.
Worthy of special mention is a monograph which looks at the history of child soldiers in the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War and the social, cultural and historical foundations of this phenomenon. See Kucherenko, Little Soldiers. The majority of other works focus predominantly on the African Continent. See, for example, Myriam Denov, Child Soldiers: Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Alcinda Honwana, Child Soldiers in Africa (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Chris Coulter, Bush Wives and Girl Soldiers (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008).
12.
See Karen Wells, Childhood in a Global Perspective (Cambridge: Polity, 2009), 37.
13.
For a detailed discussion of these contradictions in the context of Sierra Leone, see Myriam Denov, “Child Soldiers and Iconography: Portrayals and (Mis)Representations”, Children and Society 26 (2012): 280–292.
14.
See, for example, the resolution of Senate issued in November 2012 on the seventieth anniversary of the establishment of the Zawisza troops within the Grey Ranks, “Uchwała Senatu Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej z dnia 9 listopada 2012 r. z okazji 70. rocznicy powołania do służby ‘Zawiszy’ Szarych Szeregów”, Nasza Polska 47 (2012): 14.
15.
Magdalena Kowalewska, “Polska Walcząca”, Nasza Polska 32 (2012): 4.
16.
Eugeniusz Duraczyński, “Powstanie warszawskie - badań i sporów ciąg dalszy”, Dzieje Najnowsze 1 (1995): 71.
17.
Adam Michnik, “Honor, pacierz i namysł”, Gazeta Wyborcza (30–31 July 1994), 8–9.
18.
Maria Janion, “Płacz generała”, Gazeta Wyborcza (2–3 August 1997), 14.
19.
See, for example, Jan Nowak Jeziorański, “Nie przebaczajmy zbyt łatwo”, Gazeta Wyborcza (5–6 August 1995), 6.
20.
Adam Nowak, “Wspaniała niezgoda na zniewolenie”, interviewed by Adam Tycner, Rzeczpospolita (28–29 July 2012), P3.
21.
See Kucherenko, Little Soldiers.
22.
P.W. Singer, “Children at War”, Military History (25 September 2007), 52.
23.
See, for example, Joanna Wawrzyniak, Veterans, Victims, and Memory: The Politics of the Second World War in Communist Poland (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2015), 136–138.
24.
For a longer discussion of the memory of Warsaw Uprising under Communism, see Jacek Zygmunt Sawicki, Bitwa o prawdę. Historia zmagań o pamięć Powstania Warszawskiego 1944–1989 (Warszawa: DiG, 2005). See also, Jacek Sawicki, “Peerelu zmagania z legendą”, Newsweek Polska 31 (2004): 54–56.
25.
Wiesław Głębocki, Warszawskie pomniki (Warszawa: PTTK, 1990), 105.
26.
Lawrence A. Hirschfeld, “Why Don’t Anthropologists Like Children?” American Anthropologist 104/2 (2002): 613.
27.
Stargardt makes a similar observation about other representations of children in World War II. See Stargardt, Witnesses of War, 10.
28.
For first-hand accounts discussing the variety of roles played by female soldiers in the Warsaw Uprising, see Patrycja Bukalska, Sierpniowe dziewczęta ’44 (Warszawa: Trio, 2013).
29.
Denov, “Child Soldiers and Iconography”, 284.
30.
The link between gender and nationalism is not limited to the Warsaw Uprising but can be discerned in other contexts. For example, Elżbieta Ostrowska argues that in the nineteenth century, in particular, the figure of the “Polish Mother” was used as a way of strengthening the homosocial community of men involved in the national struggle. Elevated to a semi-divine level she was to facilitate the male bonding and inspire nationalist sentiment. See Elżbieta Ostrowska, “Matki Polki i ich synowie. Kilka uwag o genezie obrazów kobiecości i męskości w kulturze polskiej”, in Małgorzata Radkiewicz (ed.), Gender. Konteksty (Kraków: Rabid, 2004), 215–252.
31.
Matylda Witkowska, “Łódź ma pomnik Małego Powstańca”, Dziennik łódzki (1–2 August 2009), 2.
32.
See, for example, Marek Kondrat, “Na swoim przeklętym miejscu”, interviewed by Martyna Bunda, Polityka 42 (2010): 91.
33.
Denov, “Child Soldiers and Iconography”, 282.
34.
Studies have shown that this is a common practice across the countries of the global North. See, for example, Katrina Lee-Koo, “Horror and Hope: (Re)presenting Militarised Children in Global North-South Relations”, Third World Quarterly 32/4 (2011): 739.
35.
For a discussion of Western debates on child soldiery as the new “colonial” discourse, see Kate Manzo, “Imaging Humanitarianism: NGO Identity and the Iconography of Childhood”, Antipode 40/4 (2008): 635.
36.
See James M. Jasper, “Moral Panics”, International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavorial Sciences 2 (2001), 10029.
37.
Cook and Wall, “Introduction: Broadening the Conversation”, 1.
38.
Cezary Gmyz, “Nowe święto narodowe”, Rzeczpospolita (1 August 2008), A5.
39.
Marta Brzezińska, “POP-Powstanie Warszawskie”, Gazeta Polska (27 July 2011), 23.
40.
Jarosław Wróblewski, “Dzieciaki z ‘Radosława’”, Gazeta Polska (3 August 2011), 18.
41.
Maciej Miłosz, “Legenda adresowana do młodych”, Rzeczpospolita (30 July 2010), 1.
42.
Jerzy Szacki, “Zabawa czy żałoba”, interviewed by Katarzyna Wiśniewska, Gazeta Wyborcza (28–29 July 2012), 3.
43.
Brzezińska, “POP-Powstanie Warszawskie”, 23.
44.
Paweł Wieczorkiewicz, “Powstanie skomercjalizowano, ale to lepsze od zapomnienia”, interviewed by Rafał Jabłoński, Życie Warszawy (27 July 2007), 16.
45.
See, for example, Marcin Turkot, “Komando hitlerowskich cyborgów”, Tygodnik Powszechny (31 July 2011), 31.
46.
Katarzyna Kubisiowska, “Gra o historię”, Tygodnik Powszechny (12 January 2010), 34.
47.
Maureen Moynagh, “Human Rights, Child-Soldier Narratives, and the Problem of Form”, Research in African Literatures 42/4 (2011): 40.
48.
Lee-Koo, “Horror and Hope”, 739.
49.
Other examples of educational entertainment rarely deal with the theme of child soldiers. For example, the long-awaited computer game Uprising ’44: The Silent Shadows, published in 2012, focused on Cichociemni, the elite paratroops of the Home Army, trained in Britain, who also took part in the Uprising. Similarly, the Facebook project Kumpel z przeszłości—1944 Live (My Mate from the Past: 1944 Live) focused on older soldiers, aged 23 and 24. In contrast, the musical album Powstanie Warszawskie (The Warsaw Uprising) by the Polish rock band Lao Che, which came out in 2005, looked at the trajectory of the revolt more generally. For an interesting discussion of the Facebook project, see Dieter De Bruyn, “World War 2.0: Commemorating War and Holocaust in Poland Through Facebook”, Digital Icons. Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media 4 (2010): 45–62.
50.
Jacek Frąś, “Kaczka ”, in Tomasz Kołodziejczak (ed.), Wrzesień. Wojna Narysowana. Antologia Komiksu Polskiego (Warszawa: Egmont, 2003), 121–126.
51.
The images used by Frąś are not of Warsaw, as one would expect, but of Budapest, taken by the Soviet-Jewish photographer Evgenii Khaldei. For more on these photographs and Frąś’s use of them, see essays in the “Critical Forum: The Afterlife of Photographs”, Slavic Review 76/1 (2017).
52.
See, for example, the speech delivered by President Kwaśniewski on the sixtieth anniversary of the Uprising. Aleksander Kwaśniewski, “Dziękujemy ci, powstańcza Warszawo”, Rzeczpospolita (August 3, 2004), A6.
53.
Dieter De Bruyn, “Patriotism of Tomorrow? The Commemoration and Popularization of the Warsaw Rising Through Comics”, Slovo 22/2 (2010): 58.
54.
Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (New York: Harper Perennial, 1994), 30.
55.
These are not the only examples of children’s books on the theme of the Warsaw Uprising. The following are also worthy of special mention: Michał Rusinek, Zaklęcie na “W” (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Literatura, 2011); Joanna Papuzińska, Asiunia (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Literatura, 2011).
56.
Jacek Szczerba, “Wersja dziecięca powstania”, Gazeta Wyborcza (1 August 2006), 12.
57.
Szymon Sławiński, Mały powstaniec (Warszawa: Muchomor, 2006), 14. This would, of course, suggest that the quasi-military activities undertaken by the “sewer rats” were, from the very beginning, designed specifically for the youngest participants of the Uprising and that possibly, the Scouts were recruited for their very qualities as children.
58.
Szczerba, “Wersja dziecięca powstania”, 12.
59.
See, for example, Sławiński, Mały powstaniec, 15, 19, 20–21, 27.
60.
This tendency to infantilize the memory of Warsaw Uprising is also visible in the educational gadgets produced by the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising, including colouring pads aimed at children as young as 3, puzzles and board games .

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University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Ewa Stańczyk

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Stańczyk, E. (2019). Moral Panic: The Child Soldiers of the Warsaw Uprising. In: Commemorating the Children of World War II in Poland. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32262-5_4

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32262-5_4
Published: 03 November 2019
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-32261-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-32262-5
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