Warsaw names street after murdered mayor Adamowicz with call to “resist flood of hate”

A street named after Paweł Adamowicz, the mayor of Gdańsk who was murdered at a charity event in January last year, has been unveiled in Warsaw.

The decision to name the street was taken at the request of Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, who hails from Adamowicz’s former Civic Platform (PO) party. Its unveiling on Friday was attended by PO politicians and Adamowicz’s family, including his widow, Magdalena, reports Gazeta Wyborcza.

Trzaskowski hailed Paweł Adamowicz as a “symbol”, saying that “we should learn from [him] to be faithful to our views, to resist the hate and lies flooding over us”. He lamented that the murdered mayor had to “carry out his work against the manipulations, slander and hate that spilled out of PiS media”.

The latter was a reference to a fact that many in the opposition – including Magdalena Adamowicz, now a PO MEP – blame the murder on what they see as a witch hunt against Adamowicz by media controlled by or aligned to the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, including public broadcasters.

Adamowicz was stabbed on stage at a concert for the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity (WOŚP) fundraising event in Gdańsk on 13 January 2019, and died from his injuries the next day. During the attack, the murderer declared that he had killed Adamowicz because PO wrongly imprisoned him.

However, many details regarding the murderer, known only as Stefan W., and his motivations remain unconfirmed. Over a year later he remains in detention, with psychiatrists reportedly still assessing his mental health and no indication of if and when a trial will take place.

During Friday’s unveiling, political overtones were also apparent in tributes to Adamowicz as a symbol of local government – which tends to be in opposition hands – and its ability to resist the central authority of the PiS government.

“It is from cities that the loudest calls come for defending democracy,” said Magdalena Adamowicz. “Local governments are today one of the last bastions of resistance to the galloping authoritarianism of the Polish central government. If not for them, Poland would already be a party monolith.”

“Paweł saw in local government institutions hope for revival, for greater involvement of citizens in solving social and environmental problems,” she continued, adding that her husband represented “openness, respect for different views and democratic values”.

When Warsaw city council voted last month on whether to name a street in honour of Adamowicz, PiS members refused to participate. Their head, Cezary Jurkiewicz, said that, while they “did not want to speak ill of the dead”, Adamowicz was a “figure who raises some controversy”, reports Gazeta Wyborcza.

PiS councillors also protested against the “pettiness and callousness” of Warsaw for naming a street after the murdered opposition mayor of Gdańsk yet refusing to do so for Lech Kaczyński, the former PiS mayor of Warsaw who, while serving as president, died in the Smolensk air disaster.

Mayor Trzaskowski last month announced that only after May’s presidential elections would a decision be made over the long-running saga of whether to name a street in the city after Lech Kaczyński, who was the twin brother of current PiS chairman and Poland’s de facto leader, Jarosław.

However, in March last year Trzaskowski similarly declared that the decision would be made after October’s parliamentary elections. The PO majority on the city council has resisted efforts by the PiS-appointed regional governor to create a Lech Kaczyński Street.

Main image credit: Maciek Jazwiecki/Agencja Gazeta

Juliette Bretan is a freelance journalist covering Polish and Eastern European current affairs and culture. Her work has featured on the BBC World Service, and in CityMetric, The Independent, Ozy, New Eastern Europe and Culture.pl.