On 20 September 1996 Michael Jackson performed on an old military runway at Bemowo Airport in Warsaw. It was the fifth show of the HIStory World Tour. Officially 100,000 tickets were sold. Police put the real crowd closer to 120,000 after thousands pushed through a gap in the fence. Three Antonov cargo planes had flown in 300 tons of equipment days earlier. Along with Prague, it was one of the two largest audiences of the entire tour.
What almost nobody remembers is what happened after the lights went down. That same night, on the top floor of the Marriott hotel, Jackson sat down with Marcin Święcicki, Warsaw’s mayor from 1994 to 1999. The meeting had been arranged by Jacques Tourel, a French businessman based in Warsaw who had suggested the idea in the first place. Jackson wanted to build something in the city.
Michael Jackson – History Tour Live in Warsaw (September 20, 1996)
Eight months later he came back, and this time there was no concert. Jackson landed at Okęcie in May 1997 and was received almost like a head of state. He visited Wilanów Palace, the Presidential Palace and Łazienki Park. A helicopter took him over the site the city had in mind. On the night of 27 May 1997 he initialled a letter of intent with Święcicki, and the two celebrated the plan publicly the following day, 28 May 1997. The document was short. Warsaw would find the land. Jackson would bring his name and his ideas. Both sides had twelve months to produce a design and then decide whether to continue.
He was specific about what he wanted inside it. The park was to carry Polish legends and fairy tales, not just imported American characters. Święcicki’s office had Polish folk tales translated into English and sent to him. Jolanta Kwaśniewska, then the first lady, publicly backed the project. The money was never clear. Polish papers reported $500 million. The Los Angeles Times put Jackson’s own contribution at $100 to $300 million. Święcicki later said Jackson was not promising to write the cheque himself but to pull investors in behind his name. Polish television filmed the whole two-day visit, including the moment the papers were signed.
Michael Jackson in Poland
Then it died, and not because Jackson walked away. The Bemowo land was military property, not the city’s, so the transfer needed government approval. At a meeting in summer 1997, interior minister Janusz Tomaszewski refused. He cited the volume of protests against the project. Janusz Pałubicki, the minister coordinating the special services, reportedly argued that if Warsaw’s main airport were ever destroyed in a nuclear strike, Bemowo would be essential. City officials scrambled for alternatives at Babice, Powsin, Siekierki and the Wilanów meadows. A second and far more detailed letter of intent for the “Michael J. Jackson Theme Family Park” was drawn up as late as February 1998. Nothing was ever built. The airfield is still there.
It is easy to file this away as a curiosity, but it says something about the man that gets lost in everything else written about him. This was the artist behind Thriller, still the best-selling album ever made, a 13-time Grammy winner and a double Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee. He had just played to more people in Warsaw than almost anywhere else on a 35-country tour. He could have taken the money and left. Instead he asked for Polish fairy tales. Warsaw has not forgotten. In 2009, months after his death, the city named the amphitheatre in Górczewski Park after him and set a stone at Bemowo marking the night he electrified Poland.
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