On 7th December the Supreme Administrative Court (NSA) upheld the verdicts of the Provincial Administrative Court (WSA) on the annulment of 44 orders of the governor of the Mazovian province changing the names of streets in Warsaw in connection with the decommunization Act. The NSA, in the justification of its rulings, pointed out that the WSA correctly held that the Voivode’s orders on changes of street names were made in violation of the regulations, and the opinion of the Institute of National Remembrance - on which these orders were based - was inappropriate.

In this situation, the authorities of Warsaw, ruled by the Civic Platform, could either give these streets new names or return to communist names. The latter solution was chosen.

In Warsaw, as a result of the NSA’s decision, apart from the repeal of the change of Armii Ludowej Avenue (communist partisans subordinate to Moscow) to Lech Kaczyński’s Street, it became legally binding, among others, to repeal the change of names from Stanisław Wroński (communist activist) to Anna Walentynowicz (heroine of „Solidarność”); Mały Frank (communist partisan murdered by the Germans) to Danuta Siedzikówna „Inki” (a soldier tortured to death by the NKVD and the UB); Zygmunt Modzelewski (a communist activist) to Jacek Kaczmarski (a poet, singer, bard of „Solidarność”); 17th January (the date of the invasion of Warsaw by the Soviet army together with the Polish army allied with them) to the Workers’ Defense Committee (an anti-communist organization from the 1970s). There are several dozen such examples of return to the tradition from the period of the People’s Republic of Poland.

The President of the capital, Rafał Trzaskowski from PO, signed a document on this matter, sanctioning the return to communist names.

The public opinion calls it the recommunization of streets.

The veterans of the fight against communism are outraged.

I would like to inform that today we, the veterans of the struggle for the independence of our homeland and repressed for loyalty to Poland by German, Soviet and indigenous communist criminals, will address a warm appeal to Mr Rafał Trzaskowski, President of Warsaw, to Mrs Ewa Malinowska-Grupińska, President of the City Council and all councillors, not to rename streets and buildings by giving them names which in any way commemorate people, organisations, places and events promoting the criminal totalitarian system, namely communism.

— said judge Bogusław Nizieński, who on behalf of the veterans of the struggle for independence appealed to the authorities of Warsaw to refrain from restoring the changed names of streets in the capital.

He pointed out that „the historical experience of Poland and its capital is supposed to induce concern for historical memory, also in the sphere of naming important places for the capital”.

We are addressing this appeal to the authorities of Warsaw, as representatives of those generations of Poles who personally experienced the evil and cruelty of totalitarianisms of the 20th century. We only managed to be victorious in the fight against it because we kept our steadfast faith in a free and independent Poland to the end. In our free homeland, every attempt to restore communist symbols nullifies the last will of the independence soldiers who, like us, wanted to call a spade a spade - to separate good from evil, truth from falsehood and patriotism from betrayal.

— emphasized judge Nizieński.

wPolityce.pl, tłum. KJ