Both meanings and forms of religious imagery have always been influenced by the political and ideological agendas of their time. The article is an exploration in contemporary Catholic imagery in Poland, focusing on its involvement with different expressions of the national. Using the example of the Katyń Chapel Mausoleum in Warsaw military basilica the article questions the relationship between the image and the relic both in Catholic Christianity, and in the secular modern cult of the nation. It also follows the development of religious iconography related to the Katyń massacre with a special focus on images of the Madonna, describing in detail two of them, functioning with the same name of Our Lady of Katyń. Following the fate of both images, as well as the way they have been contextualized before and after 1989, the text attempts to trace the changes and modifications of different concepts of the recent Polish past and different politics of history. Comparing the Pietà type image of Katyń Madonna that evolved among Polish Catholics in times of People's Republic of Poland with the secular Pieta-inspired images of partisans used by the People's Republic's regime, it points at differences in their emotional content, relating the differences to the political agendas of the two

The article is dedicated to the image of the Katyn or Kozelskaya Madonna (the so-called "Katyn Mother of God") and was written before the plane crash near Smolensk on April 10, 2010. Accordingly, the article does not analyze the political use of images and symbols in the context of this catastrophe. The text also does not contain an analysis of Polish political conflicts that followed the events of April 10.

The article was originally published as: Klekot, E. (2014) "Our Lady of Katyn", in Gasior, A. (Hg.) Maria in der Krise. Kultpraxis zwischen Konfession und Politik in Ostmitteleuropa, ss. 301-312. Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau Verlag.

E. Klekot, Katyn Mother of God: Religious Imagery and the Politics of Historical Memory, Gosudarstvo, religiya, tserkva v Rossii i za rubezhom [State, Religion, Church in Russia and Abroad]. 2016. N 3. pp. 116-131.

Klekot, Ewa (2016) "Our Lady of Katyń: Religious Imagery and the Politics of History", Gosudarstvo, religiia, tserkov' v Rossii i za rubezhom 34(3): 116-131.

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symbolic languages. Finally, it also juxtaposes total absence of triumphalism in the grassroot Katyń-related imagery and the nationalistic triumphalism of glorification of the Katyń victims in the Katyń Chapel Mausoleum, where the pierced skull of the major Szymański faces the most modest Katyń Madonna carved by an inmate of Kozelsk on a wooden board from a camp plank bed.

Keywords: Katyn, Anna Danuta Staszewska, Stanisław Bałos, Our Lady of Katyn, historical memory, secularization.

The Day of Remembrance of the victims of the Katyn tragedy on April 13, 2008 was marked by a solemn act of consecration of a human skull pierced by a bullet. It is placed in a glass vault-reliquary, located behind a small wooden image of the Virgin in the Katyn Chapel-mausoleum in the military basilica of Warsaw (Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary-Queen of Poland). The skull of the Katyn martyr, Major Ludwik Szymanski, was placed here the night before, in the presence of his son and his family. As a result of this operation, the relic began to visually dominate a small image of the Madonna, a hand-made copy of the wonderworking Ostrobram icon. "Together we won a great battle for memory, tradition, and the truth about Katyn," said Bronislaw Komorowski, Marshal (Speaker) of the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish parliament1, in connection with the act of consecration. But the question remained what kind of victory this act actually represented, in which the crude materiality of Major Shymansky's skull overlapped with the representational power of the religious image called the Katyn or Kozelskaya Madonna. 2
1. Czaszka zamordowanego oficera spoczęła w Kaplicy Katyńskiej, informacja z alx, jas, PAP, IAR z dnia, Gazeta 13.04.2008 [http://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/1.80708.5114647.html, accessed on 31.05.2009]

2. Kozelsk-the name of the concentration camp where Polish officers were held before being executed by NKVD officers in the Katyn forest in 1940. However, it was the phrase "Katyn tragedy" that became a general term for mass executions of Polish citizens, mainly military and police. Executions were carried out in several locations throughout the USSR, of which only Katyn came under Nazi occupation in 1941 and gained widespread fame in 1943, when the Nazi media reported the discovery of mass graves of Polish officers.

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The name of the Katyn or Kozelskaya Mother of God was given to several images of the Madonna, each of which, with the exception of one, was created by Polish prisoners of war in Soviet camps, and then they were distributed to Polish churches and chapels around the world3. In addition, all of them were reproduced in many copies, also called Katyn, or Kozelsk, Madonnas. I would like to focus here on two such images: the one in the Katyn Chapel-mausoleum in Warsaw, and the other - the only one that does not come from the Kozelsk camp and therefore, unlike all others, is not a relic. 4 After tracing the fate of both images and the way they were contextualized before and after 1989, I will then try to understand their symbolic meaning and highlight the changes that took place in what Marshal Komorowski of the Sejm called "Polish memory." I think that due to the differences in iconography and contextualization, these two images express different concepts of Poland's recent past and denote different philosophies of history.

The Madonna Gozhekhovsky

The image currently displayed in the Katyn Chapel is a relic. The image of the Madonna of Acute Brahma (Vilnius) was made by one of the prisoners of the Kozelsky camp, Lieutenant Henrik Gorzekhovsky 5, on the occasion of his son's nineteenth birthday. The author used a small fragment (13.5 cm x 8.5 cm x 0.65 cm 6) of a pine board that was part of his camp bunks: he cut out the image with a knife and the same oru-

3. Siomkajło, A. (2002) Katyń w pomnikach świata, ss. 35-47. Warszawa: Oficyna Wydawnicza CB, Oficyna Wydawnicza Rytm.

4. The art critic Alina Siomkailo, who writes about Katyn monuments around the world, mentions five images of camp origin, three of which are currently on display in churches: two in Warsaw (one, since 2002, in the Katyn Chapel-mausoleum, the other, also since 2002, in the Jesuit church of St. Andrew Boboli in Warsaw). Rakovecska Street) and one in Krakow (since 1997) in the other Jesuit church of St. John the Baptist. Андрея Боболи (Siomkajło, A. Katyń w pomnikach świata, s. 35-41).

5. All the officers killed in the Katyn tragedy were posthumously promoted by the President of the Republic of Poland in 2007. When I mention the rank of lieutenant here, I am guided by the rank that the deceased had at the time of death. Major Shymansky was killed while serving as a captain and was promoted in 2007.

6. Siomkajło, A. Katyń w pomnikach świata, s. 36.

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diem scribbled the date and place on the back: "Kozielsk (Polish spelling) 28-II-1940". About two and a half months later, Henryk Gorzechowski was killed in Katyn, but his son - and a cellmate in the same camp-was among the few survivors who were transferred to another camp, where he took the bas-relief with him. Thus, the image of the Katyn Madonna was never found in the grave of its author, but traveled with his son throughout his journey to freedom through Soviet camps and the fronts of World War II. Having survived the wreck of a British warship, the image finally found refuge in Gdynia, Poland, where its owner lived after the war. In the 1990s, the author's grandson gave the image to the Katyn Foundation in Warsaw, and in September 2002 it was placed as the main altar image in the Katyn Mausoleum Chapel.

7. Siomkajło, A. Katyń w pomnikach świata.

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In the chapel, the Madonna was encased in a thin gold frame and found a halo made of relics-buttons from army clothing recovered from the mass graves of victims of the Katyn tragedy. However, the image itself is not a relic of the same order as the buttons used for the halo: it was never buried with its author; on the contrary, according to the owner of the image, he saved it from this fate.8 All the elements - a wooden image and a halo - were built into a glazed niche, topped with an impressive figure of a flying eagle made of amber and gold (the national symbol of Poland). On a block of white Carrara marble with a niche in the upper part, the motto is carved in Latin, which reads: Vinctis non victis ("to the vanquished, but not to the defeated"). The chapel, designed by architects Konrad Kuczynski and Andrzej Miklaszewski, was opened on September 15, 2002. Since April 2008, a bullet-riddled skull placed behind the image and slightly above it has been looking over the Madonna of Lieutenant Gorzechowski from the depths of the same glass reliquary. Under the niche, a large brass cross of the Order of Military Valor is fixed on the same white marble. In the front wall of the throne, made of gray marble, there is an urn with ashes from the Katyn graves, decorated with the Polish military emblem - an eagle. The walls of the chapel are covered with 15,500 inscriptions listing the names and military ranks of the victims of the Katyn tragedy.

The Madonna Stashevskaya

The second image of Our Lady of Katyn, which I would like to focus on , is a linocut made by the artist Anna Danuta Stashewska in 1971.9 or 1972.10 According to the Polish journalist and opposition activist Antony Zambrowski, who personally knew the author (she was also an active member of the Catholic opposition), the engraving is based on an existing painting, which was written by the

8. Pięciak, W. (red.) (2007) "Matka Boska Kozielska", Tygodnik Powszechny. Dodatek specjalny: Katyń. Powrót opowieści, 23.09.2007.

9. Pięciak, W. (red.) (2007) "Matka Boska Kozielska", s.45.

10. Zambrowski, A. (2004) Matka Boska Katyńska [http://www.antonizambrowski.pl/artykuly_archiwalne/2004/matka_boza_katynska.html, accessed on 31.05.2009].

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The collection was made by the artist in 1968 and was kept in her Warsaw apartment 11. The engraving, called by the author Pietà I, or "Madonna of the Executed", is part of a series called "Lamentations". In 1973, a black-and-white linocut called "Fallen" 12 was exhibited in Warsaw, in the largest and most prestigious state art gallery of the Continent. The title of the work was changed in order to circumvent censorship, which avoided any direct association with the Katyn massacre. This topic was one of the taboo topics under the regime of that time, even though the official version at that time held that the Nazis were responsible for the Katyn murders.

Stashevskaya's engraving shows a veiled woman bending over a dead man, her hands with elongated fingers encircling his head. The woman's face is almost invisible, as her head is lowered and tilted towards the man's shaved head:

11. Zambrowski, A. Matka Boska Katyńska.

12. Siomkajło, A. Katyń w pomnikach świata, s.45.

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he is depicted in the foreground with his back to the viewer and half obscures the woman's face. A bullet hole is clearly visible in the back of the man's shaved head. The woman's head is either surrounded by a white circle of a halo, or simply depicted against the background of a full moon in the night haze. The confident lines of the linocut create a sense of solemn monumentality, while the black background with a white circle of a halo or moon conveys the dramatic tension and tragedy of the scene depicted. Madonna's hands, supporting her head and holding it to her chest, resemble the gesture of a mother rocking a baby who can not yet hold the head. Emotionally, the image refers to Pietà, although the victim does not look like Jesus and does not have a halo around his head.

According to Zambrowski, on the fortieth anniversary of the Katyn massacre in April 1980, actor Maciej Reisacher brought his friend, a professional photographer, to the Stashevskys ' to make photocopies of the engraving. It was planned to distribute them at the entrance to the churches in Warsaw. At the last moment, the action was canceled by Henrik Vuets, an activist of the opposition organization KSS KOR 13, but several copies were published, and the image began to spread underground 14. The engraving became very popular in the 1980s and was widely replicated by underground printing houses, but always without specifying the author's name. It appeared as a photo print and was distributed under the name "Our Lady of Katyn", reproduced on samizdat postage stamps - separately, in blocks or as part of a series of images of the Polish Madonna with the signature either Poczta Solidarność ("Solidarity Mail"), or Poczta Niezależna ("Independent Mail"), or Polska. Solidarność ("Poland. Solidarity").

In the 1980s, the photo print was officially published only once, again without specifying the author's name, and this time - for obvious reasons-without any references to Katyn. The book, in which he appeared in 1983, is a luxurious edition in a woven cover, richly illustrated with photographs and engravings. It was published by PAX , one of the few official Catholic publishing houses in socialist Poland. The publication was titled: Bogarodzico-

13. "Committee of Public Self-Defense - Committee for the Protection of Workers" - an opposition organization that emerged in 1976 (initially as the "Committee for the Protection of Workers"); in 1981, it joined Solidarity. - note.

14. Zambrowski, A. Matka Boska Katyńska.

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maryjny almanach Polski Dziewico. ("To the Mother of God, Virgin. Polish Marian Almanac")15. The book, which contains pious texts, pastoral epistles and other materials of a spiritual nature - prayers, poems, images - on page 294 contains a full-page reproduction of "Our Lady of Katyn" by Anna Danuta Stashevskaya without any signatures. The next page contains a pious meditation text written by Fr. Maximilian Kolbe in 1940, in which he entrusts himself to the Mother of God. The fact that the reproduction is adjacent to the text of Kolbe, dated 1940, could serve either as a hint (1940-the year of the Katyn massacre), or as a cover, since Kolbe was killed in Auschwitz by the Nazis, who, as part of their policy of intimidation, carried out, among other things, mass executions of Polish civilians in the German occupation zone of Poland.16 There is a list of illustrations at the end of the book, and under" illustration on page 294 "we do not find the author's name, but we see a comment that reads: "Image of the Virgin of the war, wood carving". If the absence of the author's name, its reference to the period of the Second World War, and its contextualization through the proximity of O. Kolbe's text are understood as a deliberate intention to circumvent censorship, then an error in the designation of the image technique suggests that Stashevskaya did not know about the publication - at least when the book was being prepared for publication.

In 1991, the same publisher again used this iconographic version of the Katyn Madonna for the cover of one of the first officially published books dedicated to the Katyn massacre: Mord w Katyniu ("Murder in Katyn") Yendzhei Tuholsky. This time, however, it was not the original black-and - white linocut in reproduction, but an unknown color copy of Stashevskaya's original work-one of countless copies and reproductions of her composition that appeared in the 1980s and later.

15. The first part of the title-" To Our Lady, Virgin " (Bogarodzico - Dziewico) - is the first line from the earliest hymn in honor of the Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist. St. John the Baptist as intermediaries between Jesus Christ and sinners (dates from the XI or XII century, although it was recorded only in the XV century), which is at the same time one of the earliest existing texts in Polish, as well as an invaluable monument of national heritage - the first national anthem. Podsiad, A. (red.) (1983) Bogarodzico-Dziewico: Polski almanach Maryjny. Warszawa: Instytut Wydawniczy Pax.

16. Maximillian Kolbe was starved to death in the camp punishment cell along with several other Auschwitz prisoners as revenge for the escape of prisoners. - note.

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In the 1980s, the image of Our Lady of Katyn in Stashevskaya's version began to function in the same way as other popular religious printed products; in other words, not as a work of art, but as a pious and - in this case - patriotic printed image. Also for this reason, the issue of authorship and copyright did not arise. The Katyn Mother of God corresponded to popular ideas and diverged in copies and reproductions in the same way that the famous images of the Virgin or other saints were always distributed since the Middle Ages.

In 1980, Anna Danuta Staszewska donated her original linocut to the Katyn Institute 17, an underground civil society organization founded in April 1979 by Adam Macedonski, an oppositionist from Krakow. After 1990, the Katyn Mother of God in the iconography of Stashevskaya continued to be widely distributed in various variations: in paintings, sculptures, bas-reliefs and other techniques. Some of these works were close to the original linocut, in others the proportions were freely disturbed, the dead man appeared dressed in a military uniform, etc. Nevertheless, the scheme was always preserved: a woman hugging the head of a shot man, depicted from the back. The man from the image of the Katyn Madonna is shown from the back not only to show the wound, but also to make his image anonymous, personifying all the victims of the shooting who were hit by a bullet in the head.

In 1990, Stanislaw Balos, a folk woodcarver from Grzechini (a village in southern Poland), created a bas-relief based on Staszewska's composition. The board used to create the image was brought from Kozelsk 18, which gave the work the character of a relic, which is absent from the original linocut. But if we consider Balos ' version from an aesthetic point of view, it becomes clear that in his work the image of Stashevskaya has become really popular, if not popular. Our Lady of Balos of Katyn is devoid of the ambiguity inherent in Stashevskaya's work. His Madonna has a well-defined halo around her veiled head, her face is much more visible (only the mouth is hidden by the man's head), and her gestures are neither intimate nor tender with painful hands with long, knobby fingers, like those of Our Lady in Ver-

17. Podsiad, A. (ed.) Bogarodzico-Dziewico.

18. Siomkajło, A. Katyń w pomnikach świata, s. 45.

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sia Stashevskaya. The body of the dead man from the image of Balos looks stiff, as if the shot man was standing in front of the Madonna. The bas-relief is made in color.

I have described Balos ' work in detail because it was his bas-relief based on Stashevskaya's linocut that was used for the logo Wschodu Foundation ("Golgotha of the East"), founded by the families of those who died in Katyn and headed by Fr. Zdislav Peshkovsky (d.2007), who himself escaped from the Kozelsky camp. This context is particularly important for understanding the image. Indeed, there was an informal association of Katyn families around priests such as Fr. Peshkovsky or Fr. Nedzelyak 19; these people acted as guardians of the memory of their relatives, insisted on their commemoration and repeatedly pointed out the need to publish reliable information about the Katyn shooting. The Foundation's motto, inscribed on a ribbon hanging from a cross with an image of Our Lady of Katyn, reads: "Help us to forgive." On the same day, April 13, 2008, when Marshal Komorowski of the Sejm spoke about the battle for Polish memory won, Andrzej Saryusz-Skompski, President of the Federation of Katyn Families, said:: "The years of Communist enslavement have taught us to be meek, humble, and patient." 20 Quiet grief, humility in despair, and patience are the feelings conveyed by Katynskaya.Pietà performed by Danuta Stashevskaya. And although in Balos's version, Madonna seems to be less affectionately stroking the back of the dead man's head, and the wound stands out more clearly, the image is perceived in the same emotional way as the original Stashevskaya.

In all the images inspired by Stashevskaya's work, as in the original linocut, the bullet-pierced head plays a key role: it distinguishes the person from Jesus himself and at the same time refers to the Katyn tragedy. The reference, however, is not directly expressed, and, as we have already seen, the original engraving was officially exhibited and published as a work dedicated to Polish martyrdom in World War II

19. Allegedly killed by the secret police in the early spring of 1989, in retaliation for his opposition activities, including commemorations of the victims of Katyn in the parish church, as well as in the historic Warsaw - Powonzki cemetery.

20. " Czaszka zamordowanego oficera spoczęła w Kaplicy Katyńskiej "("The head of the murdered officer was moved to the Katyn Chapel"), report of the Polish Press Agency (RPA) 13.04.2008 [http://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/wiadomosci/1,114873,5114647.html, accessed on 31.05.2009].

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the war. Identifying a person as a shooting victim, rather than as Jesus, is compatible with both religious and secular interpretations of the image. In a religious sense, the grieving Mary can be understood as the mother of all believers, experiencing the loss of one of her countless sons. In the secular interpretation, the engraving represents a woman mourning the deceased on a moonlit night. In both contexts, women embracing a dead man with a bullet through the head are performing a universal gesture of appeasement for the mortified body after a cruel fate has passed its sentence. It is a gesture of Christian Pieta: a gesture of humility, patience, and-silent despair.

However, this gesture could hardly convey the motto "To the vanquished, but not to the vanquished", embodied in another Polish work from the time of state socialism, inspired by the secular iconography of Pietà , in the partisan monument in Warsaw 21. The monument was unveiled in May 1962 on Smolnaya Street in Warsaw, opposite the headquarters of the Polish United Workers ' Party 22. Cast in bronze, the sculpture designed by Vaclav Kovalik is a kneeling female figure holding the body of a dead man on its knees. The man's arm is bent at the elbow with a rifle, and his head is thrown back from the agony of death; with the other hand, he clutches a sprig of laurel to his chest. The woman on her knees, however, did not bend over the dead or dying man or bow her head over him. On the contrary, her back is straight, her head is confidently thrown up, and her left arm is raised vertically. The woman doesn't look at the dead man on her lap, but looks over the top of the laurel bouquet held high. According to a popular Warsaw legend, the granite foundation stone for the monument was taken from the ruined mausoleum of Marshal Hindenburg near Olsztyn, Poland. The inscription, made in red granite, reads:: "To partisan fighters from the Polish people."

21. In fact, this motto in Polish (and not in Latin, as it appears in the Katyn Chapel) is the name of another monument in Warsaw designed by Gustav Zemla, which was opened in 1973. The monument is a symbolic figure of a dying warrior. Officially, it serves as a reminder of all Warsaw residents who fell defending their city during World War II, but its location next to the cemetery of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 makes the association with this event inevitable.

22. Kaczorowski, B. (red.) (1994) Encyklopedia Warszawy, s. 665. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.

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Two images inspired by Pietà -the Katyn Madonna of Staszewska and the Monument to the Partisans of Kowalik-clearly reflect two different approaches to the national past, two understandings of it during the Polish People's Republic - underground and official. The triumphant, triumphant tone of "socialist Pieta", coupled with its impersonal heroism, corresponds to the style of totalitarian propaganda, while the granite-stone relic of the Hindenburg mausoleum metonymically points to those who were really defeated: Nazi Germany. Contrasted with all this is the quiet motherly pain of Katyn's Pietà, humble in her endless grief over the body with a bullet through the head. A woman tenderly holding the body of an apparently murdered man expresses neither victory nor triumph, but compassion. This rhetoric of loss and grief was typical of the visual culture of the 1980s. It refers both to the loss of a dear person who fell for the national cause, and to the loss of freedom embodied in the Martial Law Act of 1981, which in the mass consciousness meant the end of all hopes aroused by the Solidarity protests in 1980. In the early 1980s, silent protests consisted of dressing in black or at least dark on certain days, as well as wearing silver jewelry with black enamel added, inspired by the January 1863 Uprising with its Christian or national symbols. [23]

23. См.: Bigoszewska, W. (2003) Polska biżuteria patriotyczna. Warszawa: Comandor.

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The consoling gesture of a grieving woman from the image of Katynskaya Pietà Stashevskaya was partly reproduced by Fr. Peshkovsky, the leader of the Katyn families and the Golgotha of the East Foundation, when in 1991 he arrived in Kharkiv and Mednoye to witness the exhumation of mass graves in Mednoye. In the well-known photo, O. Peshkovsky kneels among dozens of human skulls and tries to anoint them with sacred oil to bring spiritual comfort to the deceased.

The Madonna Katyn: between christianity and nationalism

Thus, in the context of modern Polish history, the visual image of a bullet-riddled head and then a bullet-riddled skull became clearly associated with the Katyn tragedy. However, the meaning conveyed in the Katyn Pietà seems to differ from the meaning of the image from the Katyn Chapel-mausoleum, with the description of which this article began. The main and essential difference is that in the Katyn Our Lady of Stashevskaya there is only symbolic imagery, while in the chapel the image of the Madonna is primarily a material relic. In the image of Our Lady of Katyn, the man's head shot through belongs to the same order of imagery as the Madonna; in the chapel, both the Madonna and the shot through head are relics, although of a different order.

The image in the tree is a miraculous image of the Ostrobram Madonna, which is extremely popular in that part of the pre-war Polish territories that were ceded to the USSR after the Yalta Conference: in the Suburbs or Suburbs. The concept of Kresov24 as a special cultural entity played a significant role in the formation of Polish national identity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 25 Therefore, the change of borders after 1945 resulted not only in significant material losses for a huge number of Polish citizens who were forced to abandon their property and move to the west, but also in a huge symbolic loss. Ostrobrahman Madonna, one of the two most revered images of the Mother of God in pre-war Poland and the only image left outside of Poland-

24. Kresy Wschodnie-Eastern Outskirts-territories that were part of Poland before the Second World War, but are now part of Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania.

25. См.: Kolbuszewski, J. (1998) Kresy. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Dolnośląnskie.

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in the post-1945 war zone (in Vilnius), it symbolically expresses nostalgia for the lost Cities.

The Ostrobram Madonna of Lieutenant Gorzechowski is the second Ostrobram image in the same church: the Warsaw Military Basilica has a separate chapel dedicated to the "Kresow Madonna", as it is called on the official website of the military basilica 26. The chapel in honor of the Ostrobram Madonna was opened in 2005, three years after the opening of the Katyn Chapel. It can be assumed that the bas-relief of the Ostrobram Madonna of Gozhekhovsky is considered not so much a reproduction of the miraculous image as a relic of the Katyn tragedy. Perhaps we can put the question more broadly - about the representative properties of images associated with the Second World War in modern conditions; for example, we can recall the Stalingrad Madonna from the Kaiser Wilhelm Church in Berlin. Whatever their representative functions and properties may have been in the eyes of their authors and first viewers, they seem to be perceived in post-war churches more as material relics than as religious images.

Shortly before his death in 1989, Henryk Gorzechowski Jr., the son of the author for whom he created the image, described in an interview the day he received it from his father: "We didn't say a word. We just hugged. Then, for the first time, I saw tears in my father's eyes. Later, I realized how symbolic this event was. I survived! And the bas-relief has survived with me..."27. In this case, the representative function of the image is primary: it gives the stump of the board a huge protective force, which is associated with the fact that the bas - relief embodies the Madonna of Ostrobram-the image itself is miraculous. Speaking about the fate of the image made by Gozhekhovsky, art critic Alina Siomkailo reports another dramatic rescue of its owner, who served as a British Navy sailor after being released from Soviet camps: a warship sank, but the work and its owner survived. 28 Thus, the bas-relief was primarily an image of the Most Holy Theotokos, protecting its owner from misfortunes, and not at all a relic of the Katyn execution.

26. Katedra polowa (2008) [http://www.katedrapolowa.pl/poprzednia_wersja/kaplica_matki_bozej_ostrobramskiej.php, accessed on 31.05.2009].

27.Cit. по: Pięciak, W. (red.) "Matka Boska Kozielska".

28. Siomkajło, A. Katyń w pomnikach świata, s. 36.

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Nevertheless, the fact that the bas-relief of Gozhekhovsky is kept in the Katyn chapel-mausoleum indicates the intention to emphasize its status as a relic, for which the image is supplemented with a halo of buttons found during the exhumation. The presence of another image of the same Ostrobram Madonna in another chapel, on the other side of the church narthex, obviously confirms this perception; it is even more confirmed by the fact that the skull of Major Shymansky is placed behind the image and above it. The Katyn Chapel is a mausoleum and was originally conceived not in honor of the Katyn Madonna, but in honor of the Katyn martyrs. However, as part of a Christian church, it had to have religious symbols and images. Initially, the modest image of the Madonna of Gozechowski, enclosed in a gold frame, surrounded by a halo of buttons and embedded in fragile glass, was visually eclipsed by a golden eagle against the background of a white marble block. A small niche resembling the entrances to crypts in cemeteries in Southern Europe appears to be sandwiched between an eagle and the brass cross of the Order of Military Valor.

National Polish symbols, in particular the white eagle, were placed in the same context with Christian images already in patriotic jewelry of the 19th century and even earlier. 29 However, in the Katyn Chapel-mausoleum, national symbols strongly dominate over Christian ones. In addition to the Madonna, the second-Christian-type is represented here only by a metal crucifix at the altar, narrow and miniature, on the gray marble of the throne. If we take into account the fact that in this context the wooden Madonna is actually more a relic of national martyrdom than a religious image, the ideological burden of this place looks even more national and even less Christian. In her fundamental study of nationalism and Catholicism in Poland, Genevieve Zubrzycki considers this kind of public use of religious symbols in the national context as "its [religion's] ultimate defeat - its instrumentalization and demotion to the role of a symbolic carrier of national identity".30
The fact that the bullet-pierced skull of Major Shymansky is placed above the image of the Madonna just behind him, emphasizes in the translation-

29. Bigoszewska, W. Polska biżuteria patriotyczna.

30. Zubrzycki, G. (2006) The Crosses of Auschwitz: Nationalism and Religion in Post-Communist Poland, p. 221. Chicago: Univercity of Chicago Press.

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first of all, the relic features of all the components of the composition: the image, the bullet and the skull. In addition, the skull, to a much greater extent than other relics, is a material evidence of crime and martyrdom. A skull placed in a reliquary becomes an object of worship by virtue of its very location. Nevertheless, it is not a cult of a saint of the Catholic Church, but a cult of a martyr for the national cause. Since Anna Danuta Stashevska created her Pietà, the bullet-riddled head has played a very important role in the iconography of the Katyn tragedy, and eventually becomes a bullet-riddled skull, as in the painting "Our Lady of Kozel - Katyn 1940" by Alexandra Sienkiewicz-Wujcik 31-a replica of the Kozelsky Madonna of the Victorious, depicted with a child (currently it is represented in two Jesuit Polish churches)32. The evolution of the images of Our Lady of Katyn-from the mourning Pietà supporting the shot-through head of a murdered man to the bullet - pierced skull of a martyr for the national cause in the reliquary above the image of the Madonna-reflects the changes that are taking place in Polish memory of Katyn, as well as in the philosophy of history in general.

Translation with english Maria Khramovoy

Bibliography / References

Bigoszewska, W. (2003) Polska biżuteria patriotyczna. Warszawa: Comandor.

Kaczorowski, B. (red.) (1994) Encyklopedia Warszawy. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.

Kolbuszewski, J. (1998) Kresy. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Dolnośląnskie.

Pięciak, W. (red.) (2007) "Matka Boska Kozielska", Tygodnik Powszechny. Dodatek specjalny: Katyń. Powrót opowieści, 23.09.2007.

Podsiad, A. (red.) (1983) Bogarodzico-Dziewico: Polski almanach Maryjny. Warszawa: Instytut Wydawniczy Pax.

Siomkajło, A. (2002) Katyń w pomnikach świata. Warszawa: Oficyna Wydawnicza CB, Oficyna Wydawnicza Rytm.

Zubrzycki, G. (2006) The Crosses of Auschwitz: Nationalism and Religion in Post-Communist Poland. Chicago: Univercity of Chicago Press.

31. Siomkajło, A. Katyń w pomnikach świata, s.43.

32. Ibid., ss. 36-41.

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