WEBVTT

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So Czeslaw Milosz
was my neighbor.

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We worked on the translation
of his poems for 25 years.

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After his death,
I was quite aware

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that there was one set of the--

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I never learned to read Polish.

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I can tell whether the word
"cloud" is in a poem or not,

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but I knew that there was a
hole in the English presentation

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of his poetry.

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From the time that he walked
out of the destruction of Warsaw

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by the Nazis at the
end of World War II,

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Hitler had said, destroy it.

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Wipe out anything that moves.

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As an act of-- vindictive
act, the Russian army

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was approaching
the Vistula River.

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80% of the buildings in
Warsaw were wiped out.

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175,000 people,
mostly young, killed

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within a couple of weeks.

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This is not the Warsaw
ghetto uprising, which

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had happened two years before.

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It was part of the experience
of the murder of 3 million

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Polish Jewish people.

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So he walked away
from the city, which

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was burning, with his
girlfriend, who would be his wife.

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They found their way to
Krakow, which was intact.

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He applied for a job.

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He was 34 years old.

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Applied for a job with
the diplomatic service

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of the new country that
was coming into being,

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the People's Republic of Poland.

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And he got a job.

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And he was sent to
the United States

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because he had
learned some English

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and translated "The
Waste Land" by TS Eliot

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and arrived in January
of 1946 in New York.

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And he stayed there
for five years, a very

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awkward situation,
taking in this city.

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One of the first
letters he wrote back

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was, buildings this
tall are nonsense.

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This neon is a cheap gimmick.

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He was--