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Solidarity's Spiritual Leaders
Piotr Bieliński | 5th January 2010

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How Solidarity’s priests made the ultimate sacrifice

As the old saying goes, to whom much is given, much is required. That goes for the laity as well as the clergy, especially in Poland. It is true that the men in black robes do enjoy a special status in Poland, but at a time of need some of them were indeed called upon to do the extraordinary tasks required of them. It is also a fact that some ended up paying the highest price for this. The last of this bunch who can, without any exaggeration, be called martyrs died on the threshold of a new dawn, as it were. While the year 2009 was – in Poland and in Central Europe at large – one of generally joyous anniversaries, and rightly so, it was also marked with a few sad ones.

Just as there was nothing cold about the Cold War in many corners of the world (such as Korea, Vietnam or Afghanistan), so the term “bloodless revolution”, which describes the events of 1989, does not take into account the victims who had lain down their lives for the cause of change, sometimes just days before the change took hold.

The single most important political killing that took place in Polish modern history was the brutal murder of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, largely known as the chaplain of Solidarity. The soft-spoken, yet charismatic priest was kidnapped, tortured and killed in October 1984 by operatives of the regime. The gruesome assassination of an ordained man only solidified the status of that icon of the movement in the minds of his supporters.

However, while Father Jerzy remains the most vivid image of the repression by a fanatical system in its dying stage, at least three other high-profile Catholic priests were targeted after his death. Their names were Stefan Niedzielak, Stanisław Suchowolec and Sylwester Zych.

In 1989, Monsignor Niedzielak was in his 70s and had a long record of being a thorn in the paw of the communist government, as a long-time author of patriotic sermons delivered on so-called “forbidden holidays” – the feasts celebrated before the Second World War, but discontinued under communism. But the thing that had gotten the priest in the most trouble was his commemorations of the Soviet wartime massacre of military officers in the Katyń forest. The lawless slaughter of Polish POWs, blamed on the Nazis, was a taboo subject in communist-ruled Poland and could be freely discussed only after the fall of the regime (incidentally, it was only recently that the story found its way to the big screen, in the film by Andrzej Wajda).

Niedzielak, being privy to the details of the gruesome Katyń massacre, recalled the plight of the victims of Soviet oppression, especially those deported and killed inside the Soviet Union in that slaughter as well as others murdered by the Soviets. The visual manifestation of this was establishing the Shrine of the Fallen in the East along with placing symbolic crosses in the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw (which were systematically destroyed by unknown culprits). The organisational aspect of his activity was his role in establishing a community of relatives of those killed “in the East”, known as Rodzina Katyńska (The Katyń Family). For all this activity the priest received threatening letters, suffered beatings and other forms of harassment (including an attempted kidnapping). The final act of violence came on 20 January 1989, when assailants broke his spine in his private quarters at the parish office. That was followed by a media campaign of misinformation and defamation, aimed at tarnishing the image of the accomplished priest.

Only a few days later, on 30 January 1989, the body of 31-year-old Father Stanisław Suchowolec, a personal friend of the late Father Popiełuszko, and his family’s spiritual guardian, was found in his Białystok apartment, the murder having occurred in the small hours of the same winter day. This time, a campaign of defamation on state-run television had preceded the death, caused by asphyxiation by carbon monoxide, the result of arson.

In the summer of the same year, the third clergyman was killed. Sylwester Zych was found dead at a bus stop in the seaside town of Krynica Morska. Hated by the secret police, the priest had extended his help to a clandestine youth opposition group, and had spent four and a half years in prison in the 1980s.

To this day, it remains a mystery not only who murdered the priests, but exactly what the motives were. There is no clear answer to this question. Perhaps, party hardliners were attempting to sabotage the planned talks between the government and the opposition by sparking social unrest. Public outrage and protests could have derailed the process of negotiation. This theory might explain the first two murders. But the killing of Father Zych clearly must have been about revenge, at least to a degree, as on 11 July 1989 Poland’s political transformation was a foregone conclusion. On the other hand, some suggest that the murders were a way of disciplining the opposition, the “stick” part of a carrot and stick approach exercised by the communist government. If communism on its last legs settled scores by murdering its opponents, was it “clearing the field”? Whatever the motives, when deliberations at the famed Round Table began, a respected senior intellectual initiated them by asking those present to observe a minute of silence to honour the deaths of two murdered priests: Stefan Niedzielak and Stanisław Suchowolec. Since all of the speeches were broadcast with a short delay, state television was able omit that portion of Mr. Siła-Nowicki’s presentation to the viewers. It was perhaps a sad final chapter in keeping with the true nature of those deaths - all under a curtain of silence. That part of the discussion was finally screened on Polish public television in 2009.

Today, it does not cost us anything to remember or, for that matter, not to remember those who fought for freedom, armed only with the power of their conviction. In those old days, it cost a lot. And yet the motto of one of those champions of remembrance, Monsignor Niedzielak, when he struggled against all odds to honour the departed was: “If we forgot them, you, God, forget us...”

Photo: Jerzy Popiełuszko (1947-1984)

7th January 2010

"Just as there was nothing cold about the Cold War in many corners of the world (such as Korea, Vietnam or Afghanistan), so the term “bloodless revolution”, which describes the events of 1989, does not take into account the victims who had lain down their lives for the cause of change, sometimes just days before the change took hold.

The single most important political killing that took place in Polish modern history was the brutal murder of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, largely known as the chaplain of Solidarity. The soft-spoken, yet charismatic priest was kidnapped, tortured and killed in October 1984 by operatives of the regime"

Well,there was certainly nothing "cold" about the US attempts to control their "sphere of interest" in Latin America where death squads trained, financed and abetted by US based terrorist bases sent out gunmen to mown down those like Archbishop Romero in El Salvador 1980.

Whilst moves are made to beatify Popieluszko Archbishop Romero has been overlooked by the Vatican which was prepared to overlook such unfortunate incidences of US state backed terrorism in order to assert its anti-Communist credentials and get US funding for Solidarity

Whilst the Cold War was "dirty" and involved appalling moral dillemmas, it is about time now that Poland has, to use Vaclav Havel's term, "returned to Europe", it is surely time to move beyond more parochial interpretations of Poland's unique victimisation under Soviet Imperialism.

The vistory of Solidarity was a great moral victory for an entire nation subjugated and confined to the Soviet "sphere of influence". Yet that ought not to lead Poland to switch to uncritical and craven subserviance to the US Empire either.

Not least when priests pray for the souls of returning dead Polish troops killed in a futile and unwinnable conflict in Afghanistan that is the legacy of Zbigniew Brzezinski's foreign policy of evading detente and covertly arming the mujahadeen against the PDPA regime in Kabul and drawing in the Soviets in a war that lasted from 1979-1989.

Brzezinski in his Nouvel Observateur Interview made it quite clear that the stirred up Muslims ( and the scale of the war and carnage ) was hardly important compared to the liberation of "eastern Europe" which he believed giving the USSR it's Vietnam would acheive.

"Whatever the motives, when deliberations at the famed Round Table began, a respected senior intellectual initiated them by asking those present to observe a minute of silence to honour the deaths of two murdered priests: Stefan Niedzielak and Stanisław Suchowolec. Since all of the speeches were broadcast with a short delay, state television was able omit that portion of Mr. Siła-Nowicki’s presentation to the viewers. It was perhaps a sad final chapter in keeping with the true nature of those deaths - all under a curtain of silence".

The "curtain of silence" over the death of Popieluszko, Father Zych and Father Stanisław Suchowolec necessary to ensure the smooth progression of the Round Table Agreement in 1989 was morally dubious but the silence of that set piece speech has been compensated by the mention of Popieluszko's name ever since.

Archbishop Romero is not remembered by the Vatican in the same way nor the death squads nor the students in Chile who were at the time of Pinochet's Coup in 1973 with the full backing of the USA and who got a lot more than Adam Michnik ever got dished out, ripping out of fingernails, electrodes on the gonads etc.

in 2005, the British dramatist Harold Pinter used his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech to make such poinrs about the sheer cruelty of the US Empire in its sphere of influence.

What Pinter said had as equal validity to the brutal functionaries who carried out murders as it did to the USA but was censored from mainstream TV in accordance with the routine double standards whever US crimes are mentioned ( or rather omitted and airbrushed from history )

"Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.

The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilised. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.

The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighbouring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.

....there was....no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua.

Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright.

The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. 'Democracy' had prevailed.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest".

Something those who mourn the dead piests of Poland should contemplate is the souls of those murdered by the US which has never apologised for these crimes, as it demanded that Russia does for a different multinational empire called the USSR.

The USA is is still the Empire it was as when it committed these crimes in living memory. The double standards of which are never allowed to infilitrate Polish mainstream meadia, despite Polish troops joining in the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, a crime defined as "the supreme crime" by the Nuremburg Tribunal of 1945.

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