Meeting with Wojciech Tochman

In a world marked by war, violence and suffering, can humanity still be saved? Is it possible to preserve human reflexes in the face of an unimaginable tragedy? How thin is the line between empathy and taking risks in the name of our values? These are the questions of the modern world that are analyzed by Wojciech Tochman — one of the most important contemporary Polish reporters and writers, award-winning author of books that for years have forced us to look where we would rather look.

Wojciech Tochman is a reporter who is not looking for easy answers. His work arises from the need to document human suffering, memory and consequences of violence, but above all — from a careful look at man. His most difficult subjects were “As if you ate a stone” and “Today we will draw death”, which together with “The crowing of roosters, the cry of dogs” form a poignant triptych dedicated to life after the genocides — respectively in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda and Cambodia. In these reports, the war does not end with the last shot. It remains in memory, in the bodies and biographies of survivors, in places that try to rebuild their everyday lives. Tochman looks at what happens next: when you have to live with an experience that cannot be erased, when memory becomes a burden, and trying to return to normalcy turns out to be the next stage of the struggle for survival. Similar questions recur in his latest book, “Dolphins and Beelzebub,” which takes readers to war-torn Ukraine. This time, the reporter talks about animals — defenseless in a world riddled with the push for dominance — and people who, in the experience of evil, find the strength to save within themselves the ability to do good. And he asks, in a world where suffering is so easy to get used to, can caring for the weakest be one of the last proofs that humanity still exists?

For years, Wojciech Tochman's work touches precisely this place — the border between what is human and what is devoid of reflexes of humanity. The reporter does not moralize and does not give ready-made prescriptions. It allows its heroes to speak, looks at their choices and the consequences of events that are often impossible to comprehend. His reports are poignant, but they are not distressing. They are economical, precise and extremely attentive, so that what is most difficult sounds even stronger. So, in the course of the meeting, will it be possible to find an answer to the question of where the border passes, beyond which empathy gives way to indifference? And in a world where everyone puts themselves together, is there still room for the other person?

The meeting will be hosted by Daria Zarzeczna — a graduate of Polish philology at the University of Szczecin, PhD in humanities in the field of linguistics, a private lover of crime stories and Szczecin mysteries.