Władysław Korkuć. We will remember him…

One year ago, he celebrated 85th birthday. The story of his life was full of patriotism and Polishness. Childhood and youth were the years of war, scouting, conspiracy and the fight in Home Army in Vilnius Region. Later a few years in Soviet labour camps in Workut which broke him down but did not force him to leave the beloved Vilnius. After his come back, he got involved in the folk group Wilia and did something thanks to which he will be remembered in history: he created folk groups of children in Polish schools in Vilnius Region. Later he was active in scouting and veteran groups. Always in the first row, uncompromising and adamant.

For several generations of the inhabitants of Vilnius, it could seem that he has always been and he will always be because… he actually raised those several generations of Poles in Vilnius and Vilnius Region. He sometimes screamed or put in front of the whole choir the naughty ones who did not treat seriously a rehearsal or a Polish song. He was demanding for his children, their parents but first of all for himself. Probably because of this, he brought strong choirs of Polish children to stage in hard times of communist Lithuania. You could not sing? You did not learn a song? It would be a tragedy. Now I understand that it was a detail for him but he never let you go. The most important was that u were in a Polish group and you were absorbing Polishness. Thanks to his strictness and full commitment those groups in Polish schools sprang up at the turn of the 70s and 80s, especially the 80s.

In spite of the consequences that he had to suffer, he was persistently going ahead and preserving and passing on Polishness was the idea of his life. Even when he was not able to run folk groups he got involved in veteran movement and he supported scouting. He was everywhere. He set an example, took on challenges and chanted songs on every occasion. He could not reconcile himself with singing national songs using playback during the celebration at Rasos cemetery.

Every even the shortest conversation with late Władysław Korkuć was the occasion to travel in time, look through the history with eye-witness of those days. Many times we talked with him about the years of war and the time when Red Army came to Vilnius (he had his birthday on the 16th of September!). At the end, we want to go back to the fragments of the conversations with this legendary person from Vilnius.