Poland Welcomes Jews Expelled by Communists

From BBC News

Poland's president has promised to restore citizenship to thousands of Jews who were expelled from the country by the communists in 1968.

Lech Kaczynski described the decision to kick out about 15,000 Jews - many Holocaust survivors - as "shameful".

The purge followed nationwide student protests that began after a decision to close down a patriotic play.

People of Jewish origin were blamed, stripped of Polish citizenship and ordered out of the country.

Police violently broke up a student demonstration at Warsaw University 40 years ago.

It had been caused by the communist authorities' decision to close down a patriotic play by Poland's national poet, Adam Mickiewicz.

The protests quickly spread across the country before being crushed with considerable violence.

Many of the students and professors were of Jewish origin and the communist party used that fact to purge Jews from public life.

An estimated 15,000 people - half the country's Jewish population - were given a one-way ticket out of the country and stripped of their citizenship.

Loss of talent

Among those attending Saturday's anniversary ceremony was Michal Sobelman, one of those forced out in 1968.

"We left because we couldn't be Poles and we couldn't live here as Jews," Mr Sobelman said.

"The Poland of those times did not want us," he said.

"But with our suitcases we took a little bit of Poland that was with us for 40 years. Today, in some symbolic way, we return it to end this sad chapter," Mr Sobelman said.

Mr Kaczynski said the campaign was an enormous loss for Poland.

"It was a very bad and shameful time," he said.

"The nation lost its reputation for many years and the damage has still not be completely repaired.

"An even greater loss was that thousands of often very talented, ambitious and entrepreneurial people had to leave our country."

The president went on to promise to make up for the communist-era decision by restoring Polish citizenship to those who wanted it.

"I am ready, without any formalities or even requests... to return citizenship to everyone from those times who will want it," Mr Kaczynski said at a ceremony in Warsaw at one of the train stations where thousands had boarded to leave.

"I treat this as my personal contribution to reversing the consequences of those sad, shameful events. Never more."

Poland and Malta Stand Up to European Union, United Nations on Abortion

by Samantha Singson

The governments of Poland and Malta broke rank with the European Union on the question of abortion this week. The dissension occurred at the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) which convened it’s annual two-week meeting at UN headquarters in New York on Monday. The reaction of Poland and Malta happened after the EU tried to shift the meeting’s agenda to include the right to abortion.

On Tuesday Radoslaw Mleczko, the Polish Under-Secretary of State in the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy, told the gathering of UN Member States that Poland generally aligned itself with the EU but that any EU reference to sexual and reproductive health could not include abortion.

On Thursday afternoon, the head of Malta’s mission to the UN, Ambassador Saviour F. Borg said, “Malta would like to clarify its position with respect to the language relating to sexual and reproductive health and rights in the [EU] statement. Malta firmly continues to maintain that any position taken or recommendations made regarding women’s empowerment and gender equality should not in any way create an obligation on any party to consider abortion as a legitimate form of reproductive health rights, services or commodities.”

The split in the European Union is significant because the EU hardly ever splits on questions of social policy at the UN. Even countries that are generally anti-abortion go along with the more radical approach taken by the United Kingdom, France and Germany. They do this as an agreement that the EU will always work out their differences behind closed doors and present a united front at UN negotiations.

This works to the advantage of the pro-abortion states since they outnumber the anti-abortion states.

Moreover, an EU that is divided is one that can be defeated on social policy questions. In fact, the last time the EU split in any significant way was in the UN cloning debate which resulted in the UN calling for the ban of all forms of human cloning, an effort opposed by the UK, France, Germany and other left-wing European governments. It is unclear how meaningful this current split will be in the negotiations which will begin in earnest tomorrow.

Pro-life and pro-family issues were also woven into UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s opening remarks to the commission on Monday when he criticized the now widespread practice of choosing abortions based on the sex of the baby, an issue that was all but taken off the agenda at last year’s CSW despite solid support from both civil society and numerous governmental delegations.

In his speech to launch the new UN multi-year campaign to end violence against women, the Secretary-General stressed, “Through the practice of prenatal sex selection, countless others are denied the right even to exist. No country, no culture, no woman young or old is immune to this scourge.”

The Secretary-General also highlighted the importance of families and children stating, “We know that violence against women compounds the enormous social and economic toll on families, communities, even whole nations. And we know that when we work to eradicate violence against women, we empower our greatest resource for development: mothers raising children.”

Among the many pro-life and pro-family lobbyists attending the CSW is a large contingent of high school girls from Overbrook Academy in Rhode Island. Fourteen year old Elsa Corripio told the Friday Fax, “We want these delegates to know that there are many young people who believe in respecting life.”

Ana Paola Rangel, 15, added, “Maybe we can't change the world, but we know we can make a difference.”

The CSW meeting continues through next week.


Samantha Singson writes for the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. This article originally appeared in the pro-life group's Friday Fax publication.

Remembering Father Jerzy Popieluszko on the Anniversary of His Death

On October 19, 1984, a frail, young priest was savagely beaten and drowned by government security agents in the woods of rural Poland. The brutal death of this holy priest, carried out in the dark of night, captured the attention of the world, and his martyrdom is increasingly seen as a sacrifice leading not only to the resurrection of his own country as a free and independent nation of Christian people, but a bloody sacrifice redeeming all enslaved European peoples from the Baltic to the Urals.

Father Jerzy Popieluszko was born in 1947 on the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross, in the village of Okopy near Suchowola. His parents were farmers, and Popieluszko, like most young Poles, grew up with a profound love for the Church and a mystical love for a country whose history, culture, music and poetry are one with the Church. But it was also a time when the Church’s very existence in Poland was challenged; first with naked terror in the fifties, and then unrelenting administrative pressure in the 1960’s. As a high school student, Popieluszko kept secret his intention to become a priest for fear that the results of his examinations would be altered if his secret were known.

In 1965 Poland was celebrating its 1000 years of Christianity. In response to the festivities, the government pressured priests to form a schismatic National Catholic Church; they banned religious instruction in schools, taxed churches and seminaries, and severely restricted foreign travel for clergy. It was in that year also, that Jerzy Popieluszko entered the seminary. However, as part of the government’s campaign against the Church, he and his entire class were conscripted into the Army. Serving in an indoctrination unit in Bartoszyce, Popieluszko came to know in his own body the evil of a godless state. When it was discovered that he was carrying a Rosary, he was ordered to throw it to the ground and stamp on it. He refused, was badly beaten, and spent a month in a punishment cell. On another occasion he was ordered to remove a medal of Our Lady that he had worn since receiving it as a gift for his First Communion. Again he refused and was ordered to stand in the rain, barefoot, for many hours. These repeated punishments were endured quietly and bravely, but had a long-term effect on his health.

Finally resuming his seminary studies, he was seen as ordinary, frail, and “not spectacular,” but was ordained by Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski on May 28, 1972. By 1978 his Army punishments were taking a toll and he collapsed while saying Mass. To assist his recovery, Popieluszko was assigned to a parish attached to a university where he served as chaplain to medical students, and eventually became the chaplain to the nurses and doctors of Warsaw. In this role, Father Popieluszko’s courage again came to the attention of the authorities during a Papal Mass said by John Paul II during his first visit to Poland after becoming Pope. According to Father Peter Groody, “A letter was being taken to the Pope by three young girls during the Offertory procession. The letter was taken from them by the Secret Police. Father Jerzy saw this and jumped a barrier, retrieved the letter and gave it back to the girls.”

When he was transferred to St. Stanislaus Kostka Church in May 1978, the students, nurses and doctors moved with him. While serving at that parish, Father Popieluszko was asked to become chaplain to the steel works in Warsaw at about the time of the first Solidarity strikes. Father Jerzy stayed with the workers night and day, heard confessions, offered Mass, and became the spiritual director to Lech Walesa who would ultimately lead the Solidarity Union and serve as President of a free Poland. It was during these years when the “not so spectacular seminary student” found his voice, acquired a new eloquence and charisma, and became the spiritual foundation for a peaceful revolution that would eventually change the world. In uniting himself totally with the persecuted, suffering, faithful people of Poland, Popieluszko united himself with the suffering of Christ that continues through His Mystical Body. His priesthood took on new meaning and he became, as never before, an alter Christus in the eyes of the people he served.

After the imposition of martial law, Father Jerzy began a monthly “Mass for the Fatherland” that was attended by tens of thousands of Poles who packed the seats inside and surrounded the church outside listening to the young priest over loudspeakers. His message echoed that of the great Polish Pope in Rome: “Vanquish evil with good,” he implored. He also made clear that people of faith have a moral duty to resist evil, asking, “Whose side will you take? The side of good or the side of evil? Truth or falsehood? Love or hatred?

Father Popieluszko asked the people “to include God in the difficult and powerful problems of the country” and he rebuked “the abuse of human rights and freedom of conscience."

Like so many of Poland’s great freedom fighters, he compared the sufferings of Poland to those of Christ: “The trial of Jesus goes on forever. It continues through his brothers. Only their names, their faces, their dates, and their birth places change.” Like the Pope he loved, Popieluszko knew that fear lay at the root of his country’s enslavement. He said, “If truth becomes for us a value, worthy of suffering and risk, then we shall overcome fear – the direct reason for our enslavement."

When in May 1983 a student, Grzegorz Przemyk, was brutally murdered by the Security Police, Father Popieluszko spoke boldly about the outrages being carried out against the people of Poland. Referring to the use of water cannons and a raid on a Franciscan Convent, he said “this was too little for Satan. So he went further and committed a crime so terrible that the whole of Warsaw was struck dumb with shock. He cut short an innocent life. In bestial fashion he took away a mother’s only son.” He concluded by saying “This nation is not forced to its knees by any satanic power. This nation has proved that it bends the knee only to God. And for that reason we believe that God will stand up for it.”

For his May 1982 Mass for the Fatherland, Father Popieluszko composed a new Litany to Our Lady of Czestochowa:

Mother of those who place their hope in Solidarity, pray for us.
Mother of those who are deceived, pray for us;
Mother of those who are betrayed, pray for us.
Mother of those who are arrested in the night, pray for us.
Mother of those who are imprisoned, pray for us.
Mother of those who suffer from the cold, pray for us.
Mother of those who have been frightened, pray for us.
Mother of those who were subjected to interrogations, pray for us.
Mother of those innocents who have been condemned, pray for us.
Mother of those who speak the truth, pray for us.
Mother of those who cannot be corrupted, pray for us.
Mother of those who resist, pray for us.
Mother of orphans, pray for us.
Mother of those who have been molested because they wore your image, pray for us.
Mother of those who are forced to sign declarations contrary to their conscience, pray for us.
Mother of mothers who weep, pray for us.
Mother of fathers who have been so deeply saddened, pray for us.
Mother of suffering Poland, pray for us.
Mother of always faithful Poland, pray for us.

We beg you, O mother in whom resides the hope of millions of people, grant us to live in liberty and in truth, in fidelity to you and to your son. Amen

Michael Kaufman, the New York Times’ Warsaw Bureau Chief recognized the courage, audacity and importance of Popieluszko’s message when he wrote: “Nowhere else from East Berlin to Vladivostok could anyone stand before ten or fifteen thousand people and use a microphone to condemn the errors of state and party. Nowhere, in that vast stretch encompassing some four hundred million people, was anyone else openly telling a crowd that defiance of authority was an obligation of the heart, of religion, manhood, and nationhood.”

Among the tens of thousands of Poles listening to the voice of the brave, young priest were government agents who recognized that their position and privilege were threatened by the truth being powerfully proclaimed.

In 1983 the persecution of Father Popieluszko became routine. He was frequently called to police headquarters for interrogations, spent many nights in prison, his car was vandalized, his apartment was broken into, and the authorities even planted subversive literature and bomb making materials in his apartment.

During these trials, the Holy Father asked aides why the Church in Poland was not providing greater support and protection for the priest. To show his own solidarity, the Pope sent Father Popieluszko his own Rosary.

On October 13, 1984 there was an unsuccessful attempt on his life. Father Jerzy and his driver were traveling the Gdansk-Warsaw road when something was thrown at his car that would have caused it to crash. The driver swerved the car and avoided what could have been a fatal “accident”.

Despite warnings that there could be “serious consequences” if he preached in the northern town of Bydgoszcz a week later on October 19, 1984, he celebrated Mass and instead of preaching led the people in a meditation on the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Holy Rosary. His conclusion to the reflections were his last public words:

"In order to defeat evil with good, in order to preserve the dignity of man, one must not use violence. It is the person who has failed to win on the strength of his heart and his reason who tries to win by force… Let us pray that we may be free from fear and intimidation, but above all from lust for revenge and violence."

Government security agents who are believed to have been in that congregation followed the priest and his driver for about an hour on the return journey to Warsaw. On a lonely stretch of road they stopped the car, arrested, gagged and bound the driver and put him in the unmarked police car. Father Popieluszko asked, “Gentlemen, what are you doing?”

According to Father Groody:

“The ‘police’ beat him senseless with clubs and their fists and threw him into the boot of their car and drove off. Father Jerzy recovered consciousness and began to shout and bang on the boot of the car. They stopped to gag him but Father Jerzy managed to escape. He was recaptured and again beaten with clubs. A second time he regained consciousness and this time the officers tied him with ropes around his neck and ankles in such a way that if he moved his feet, the rope would tighten around his neck. They also stuffed his mouth with material and secured it with sticking plaster, which also covered his nose thus restricting his breathing even more. The senior officer ordered that stones should be tied to his feet and returned him to the car boot. They then drove to a dam on the Wisia River where they removed Father Jerzy from the boot and threw him into the water. Forensic experts later stated that at this point he may have still been alive.

The body of Father Popieluszko was retrieved ten days later from the Wloclawek Reservoir. The body was covered with deep wounds. His face was unrecognizable, his jaw, nose, mouth and skull were smashed. He was identified by his brother from a birthmark to the side of his chest. One of the doctors who performed the post mortem said that he had never seen such violent injuries. There was blood in his lungs and his kidneys and intestines were reduced to pulp.”

The funeral of Father Popieluszko was attended by nearly a half million people. Pope John Paul II and leaders from throughout the world have prayed at his grave, and on February 8, 1997 his cause for beatification was introduced.

On the twenty-first anniversary of Father Popieluszko’s murder, U.S. Ambassador to Poland Victor Ashe stated:

“It is right and just to commemorate the death of Father Jerzy Popieluszko. Father Popieluszko was a true, modern-day, Polish hero and martyr, who died in the struggle for freedom in his beloved Poland. His courageous support for Solidarity in the face of oppression is an inspiration to all freedom loving people around the world. It is a consolation to all of us in Poland today, especially to Father Popieluszko’s church, parishioners, family and friends, that his sacrifice will be remembered forever and that his flame will burn brightly in the pantheon of Polish heroes.”

Born on the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross, Father Popieluszko wholeheartedly took up the heavy cross set before him, and in so doing, his life became a sermon and sacrifice that has freed nations and inspired all men who love truth and freedom.

Father Popieluszko, your “death has opened our eyes, the eyes of our hearts, our minds and our faith.” Pray for us, O Holy Servant of God!

Eurocrats Target Poland

From The Washington Times

By Paul Belien

Last Thursday, Viscount Etienne Davignon, a Belgian who is the chairman of the secretive Bilderberg Group, celebrated his 75th birthday. Mr. Davignon is a former vice president of the European Commission and the author of the 1970 "Davignon Report" that laid the foundations for a common European foreign policy. In the Viscount's honor a conference about the future of the European Union was held in the prestigious Egmont Palace in Brussels. One of the speakers was the wealthy anti-Bush activist George Soros, another was Daniel Cohn-Bendit, an erstwhile campus revolutionary during the 1968 Paris student riots, who is currently a German member of the European Parliament for the Green Party.

Mr. Soros opined that the EU incarnates the "open society." Mr. Cohn-Bendit advocated that the EU expel member states that are "not European enough." Countries which Europe should throw out because they hamper the EU's aim of transforming itself into a federal superstate are the United Kingdom and Poland. Mr. Davignon reiterated Mr. Cohn-Bendit's position, albeit in a more diplomatic way. Europe should debate its future "without shunning taboos" by pondering "whether countries that systematically thwart European integration should not be ousted."

The so-called Eurocrats dislike the British because the latter believe democracy means that the people decide through their national parliaments. The British oppose technocrats, like Mr. Davignon and his ilk in the unelected EU bureaucracy, who impose trans-European policies that bypass all national legislatures. But what have to Poles done to antagonize the Eurocrats? Today is the "European day against the death penalty." The EU wanted to inaugurate the event with a common European declaration against capital punishment. Poland thwarted this by refusing to sign the declaration because the EU did not condemn abortion and euthanasia as well. Last month, during an EU meeting on the death penalty, the Polish justice minister confronted his Danish colleague with Denmark's annual 15,000 abortions and the latter — a member of the Danish Conservative Party — got so angry that she left the room, slamming the door.

Other countries, such as Belgium and Portugal, accuse Poland of "immoral and unworthy behaviour" by daring to compare abortion and euthanasia to the death penalty. Richard Howitt, a British Labor politician and the vice president of the European Parliament's human rights subcommittee, said that Poland's refusal to reject the death penalty brings into question its commitment to European values.

The Poles are used to being lectured by the Eurocrats in Brussels. Last April, the European Parliament accused Poland of 'homophobia" because it does not want to include homosexuality in the school curriculum. Last May, the European Court of Human Rights found Poland guilty of violating human rights because it banned a "gay pride" parade in Warsaw. Last year, the European Commission threatened to deprive Warsaw of its voting rights in the European institutions if it remained in "serious breach of its obligations on human rights."

The Poles, however, are not easily intimidated. Poland's conservative government has made a farce of Polish internal politics, ending in disgraceful collapse, but it did not shy away from standing up to Brussels. Next week the EU wants to finalize the Reform Treaty, which it badly needs in order to replace the so-called "European Constitution" which was rejected in 2005 by France and the Netherlands. Poland has announced its intention to join Britain in opting out from the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights, which is part of the Reform Treaty.

The refusal of the Poles has angered the EU elites as never before. The latter realize that the position of Warsaw has more to do with the Polish people than with the current government's stubbornness in view of the Oct. 21 Polish elections.While secularism is the EU's prevailing ideology, the Poles keep referring to Europe's Christian heritage. Even if the government of Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski loses the elections, the Eurocrats are likely to be confronted again and again with a people that has escaped Europe's secularization process.

Poland will play an increasingly prominent role in the next decades, if only because it is one of the few European countries with surging birth rates. In 2006, for the first time in ten years, Poland had a positive natural growth, with 374,000 newborn babies — a rise of 10 percent compared to the previous year. This year will be even better. Mr. Soros may think that the EU incarnates an "open society," but Poland's openness to new life proves that it is one of the few open societies in Europe.

Paul Belien is editor of the Brussels Journal and an adjunct fellow of the Hudson Institute.

Feast of Our Lady of Czestochowa

Queen of Poland

Prayer (From the Feast of Our Lady of Czestochowa, August 26)

Almighty and merciful God, you have wondrously given a constant protection to the Polish nation in the Blessed Virgin Mary and adorned her sacred picture at Jasna Gora with unusual veneration of the faithful. Graciously grant that, having such aid in the battles of our life, we may be victorious over our enemy at the moment of death. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

In 1683 the valiant Polish King Jan Sobieski marched to the gates of Vienna and saved western civilization from being overrun by Moslem hordes. In his message informing Pope Innocent XI that Christendom had been saved, the King wrote, "I came, I saw, God conquered." That sums up very well a thousand years of miraculous Polish history.

In what is arguably one of the most indefensible landscapes in the world, the Polish people have been overrun many times, but the soul of Poland has never been conquered. Their fortress is union with Christ in a nation under the Queenship of His Blessed Mother.

The Polish nation led the overthrow of the most murderous, totalitarian regime of all time. Pope John Paul II termed it a "victory of fidelity": "fidelity to Christ crucified in the moment of your own crucifixion"; fidelity to the Holy Spirit "who led you through the darkness"; fidelity to "Peter's successors and to the successors of the apostles, the bishops"; and "fidelity to the nation which is particularly expressed in solidarity with the persecuted and ... those who seek the truth and love freedom."

The Holy Father charged his countrymen with the task of building a free Church "on the basis of what you have brought to maturity during the years of trial." Today Poland stands alone among the nations of what was once Christendom, in rejecting a new slavery of secular humanism, materialism and hedonism. Forged in the fire of the twentieth century, will she once again be the instrument God uses to save western civilization?

I have been moved to learn about Poland and its role in salvific history, by Pope John Paul II, by the life and martyrdom of Father Jerzy Popieluszko, and by extraordinarily good and loving Polish people who became my best friends when I lived in Jersey City, New Jersey. Those friends and I confronted evil, and with prayer, perseverance, solidarity and hope, we watched as "God conquered."

On this day, commemorated by a Polish language Mass and Jersey City's Polish Festival, I send my love and very best wishes to the Committee for the Defense of Our Lady of Czestochowa Church and all those who helped us. Sto Lat!