He is a journalist of international repute (...) He first went to Poland as a reporter on the Manchester Guardian in 1957, and has returned almost every year since; he covered the Solidarity  period and the imposition of martial law for the Observer in 1980-81.

In 1988 Neal Asherson writes: 
No other nation suffered so much in this century, and gained so little. 

Who knows, perhaps it was Europe that was sick, all Europe with the exception of Poland?

The country people of Poland, whose views and methods change only slowly. Catholic and patriotic, their ancient motto is 'We Nourish and Defend'.

All the same, the impression of 'strangeness' and the unfamiliarity of Poland have become realities which can't be argued away. Before reading an account of Polish history, it may be useful to summarise some of the elements of that history.

Where is Poland?

The brief answer is: in different places at different times. The Poles themselves, as an ethnic group, are a West Slav people speaking a Slav language whose relationship to Russian is - very roughly - like the relationship of Dutch to German. They have ranged over the flat, originally forested plains of northern Europe between the Oder river and the Pripet Marshes in the east. To the south, they have been bounded by the Carpathian range of mountains; to the north, by the Baltic Sea. The spinal chord of these lands is the Vistula river, rising in the southern mountains, flowing through Kraków in the south and Warsaw in central Poland to the sea at Gdańsk (Danzig).

Poland's frontiers have changed wildly throughout history. Sometimes Poland has been a sprawling empire stretching almost from the Black Sea to the Baltic. At other times it has been a little landlocked nucleus, or has vanished completely. At present, since the Allied leaders in 1945 decided to shift it bodily to the west, Poland is roughly where it was when it began a thousand years ago, in the time of the Piast dynasty. This series of changes led Bismarck, the supreme Prussian statesman of the nineteenth century, to dismiss Poland as a 'seasonal state', a sort of sandbank which grows larger or smaller depending on how the rains fill the river. (...)

A state is not the same as a nation. This is where Bismarck went wrong, and why so many in the west - where nation and state have come to seem synonymous - find Poland puzzling. But the Poles never mix the two words up. A 'nation' is a group of people united by cultural or racial identity , often by both. Thus a Polish passport will describe somebody as 'citizenship: Polish; nationality. Ukrainian [or Jewish, or German]'. A state is simply the political superstructure which may contain several different 'nationalities'. A state can change its borders, or be suppressed altogether . A nation survives, even if it is moved to another place or unless - as in the case of Europe's Jews under Hitler - it is physically exterminated.

For almost all of Poland's history, it has been a multinational state. Until the nineteenth century, the statement 'I am a Pole' meant 'I am the subject of the Polish crown' and not 'I am a Polish-speaking Slav of the Polish race'.

Today, the picture is different. Almost all the inhabitants of modern Poland are Slav Poles who speak Polish, and most of them are practising Catholics. The new Poland created in 1945 is - for almost the first time - a state of one nation. A few small 'national minorities' remain. But almost all Poland's Jews were murdered by the Nazis; the Germans were expelled; the Lithuanians, Ukrainians and Byelorussians vanished behind the new western frontiers of the Soviet Union, leaving only a few thousand living inside Poland's borders. 'Who are the Poles?' is now a fairly straightforward question to answer. But in history the answer was very different and much more complicated.

There were four major insurrections in occupied Poland during the Partitions, and countless national conspiracies. In a way , the 1944 Warsaw Rising against the Germans was a fifth insurrection. All the risings ended in heroic defeat. But the Poles became practised conspirators, and developed a lasting disrespect for all authority - which for so long was foreign.

Russia and Prussia, especially, tried to suppress both Polish culture and language and the Catholic faith. In response, the Poles developed one of the most intense and self-sacrificing versions of Romantic nationalism ever seen in Europe. In its most extreme form - known as 'Messianism' - Poland was thought to be the collective reincarnation of Christ, to be crucified and then resurrected for the redemption of all nations.

During the nineteenth century , the definition of a 'Pole' gradually changed. The Partition powers - on the 'divide and rule' principle - played off the ambitions of the other nationalities against those of the Slav and Catholic Poles. As a result, the old idea of a multi-racial Poland decayed, as the ethnic Poles came to suspect other races - especially Ukrainians and Jews - of collaborating with the Partition powers and of lacking commitment to the fight to regain independence.

(...)

During the Partitions, and especially after the November Rising in 1830, a large part of Poland's political, military and cultural leadership fled abroad. They settled in Paris, above all, where they became the recognised voice of their suppressed nation in the world. Much of the planning of the insurrections took place in Paris or London, and the best part of Poland's classic literature was composed in France. In the First World War, committees of Polish exiles in France and Switzerland were able to persuade Britain, France and the United States to restore an independent Poland after their victory. In the Second World War, the Poles followed the same tradition by setting up a government in exile near Paris and then in London.

In the later nineteenth century, there began an enormous economic emigration from the Polish lands, mostly of poor peasant families seeking a better life in North America or in the coal-mining areas of France, Belgium and Germany.

Out of these two very different currents of emigration there grew up the idea of Polonia - the notion that Poland did not exist only on the river Vistula but throughout the world, wherever Polish communities had settled. There is only one familiar parallel to this. It is the worldwide Diaspora of the Jews, and their attachment to the idea - and then the reality - of the land of Israel. The period of the Partitions left the Poles with violent but sometimes very mixed feelings about the rest of Europe. It was natural enough that they learned to hate and distrust Russians and Germans. But there were differences even here. With the Prussians and Germans, seen by Poles as inhuman and mechanical, it was difficult to make any contact. Polish attitudes to Russia, though, were more contradictory . There was contempt for Russian 'barbarousness', but also a fascination with Russia's size and power. There was loathing for the Russian schoolmaster bullying children who spoke Polish in class, but there was also real affection - even a sense of Slav kinship - for the open-heartedness and generosity of simple Russians. This is a mixture of emotions that has lasted.

During the Partitions, the Poles came to see France as their truest friend in the outside world. There was some background to this: the French and Polish royal families had intermarried, French had become the polite language of the great Polish aristocrats, and Poland had drawn many ideas from the Enlightenment and the Revolution of 1789 before its fall. Afterwards, Napoleon supported the Polish cause (for his own ends), and for most of the nineteenth century French governments not only welcomed Polish exiles but loudly endorsed their calls for the restoration of independence.

Apart from words, though, not much was done to help. As the years passed, and the twentieth century began, Polish feelings not just about France but about the United States and Britain became ambiguous. These were 'free' countries in which - France especially - Poles felt at home. At the same time, Poles came to realise that these governments would offer their country little more than sympathy and applause. The Poles felt themselves to be culturally part of 'the Christian West', but the west did not reciprocate - would, indeed, betray Poland for the sake of a quiet life. As a result, attitudes towards the west became the queer compound they still remain: yearning admiration combined with sardonic mistrust. The Second World War, which left most Poles with a sense that they had been betrayed and abandoned by their Allies in the West, strongly reinforced this trauma.

After nearly two centuries of intermittent persecution the Catholic Church in Poland has emerged more influential in civil society than in almost any other country in the world. Well over three-quarters of the population, including many members of the Polish United Workers' Party (the Communists) regard themselves as believers. At the same time, the Church itself in Poland is unusual in its attitudes. It is highly conservative over matters like abortion and contraception, but at the same time 'classless': a church of the people. It is intensely patriotic and often openly 'political', claiming a special right to act as the voice of popular opinion about anything from working conditions in factories to the curricula of universities.

This is the result of the Partitions, and especially of that 'Fourth Partition' of the Nazi occupation. After 1795, the Catholic Church became the main institution which preserved and defended Polish culture, language and identity against foreign oppression. The 'Black Madonna', the ancient icon of the Virgin which is kept in Poland's holiest shrine, the monastery at Częstochowa, became - with her sad, scarred face - the symbol of Poland's suffering and hope. Many priests and some bishops took part in the patriotic conspiracies and risings of the nineteenth century . As in Ireland under the English, the Catholic faith and the struggle for independence became fused and inseparable in the minds of the population. (...)

(...)

In the first half of the nineteenth century, Polish independence had been high in the priorities of European liberalism. Revolutions then were 'national' revolutions, the liberation of peoples from an 'imernational' league of reactionary Popes, Emperors and Kings. France, above all, had given moral support to the Polish cause, and had welcomed the Polish exiles after the failed insurrection of 1830 - 31; they were given state pensions corresponding to their rank. Even in Germany, a young revolutionary generation had given its heart to the Poles as the bravest fighters in the struggle for national liberty and constitutional government. But after the revolutionary wave of 1848, in which Polish exiles fought on the barricades in France, Italy and Germany, in Prague, Vienna and in the tremendous national uprising in Hungary , the climate  slowly changed. The surge of 1848 failed to overthrow the systems in Austria and Prussia, and did not touch Russia. Germans, faced in 1848 with the threat that Polish independence would mean the partial dismemberment of Prussia, withdrew their sympathy.

By 1900, a 'realistic' assessment of Polish chances could only be discouraging. Prussia had become the controlling element in a German Empire. Russia had begun to industrialise, enforcing an even more centralized and repressive regime on its dominions. The Habsburg Empire had become a 'dual monarchy' of Austria-Hungary in 1867, but attempts by Galicia, the Polish province under Austrian control, to win an autonomous status like that of Hungary had been weak and unsuccessful.
The trend in Europe seemed to be towards consolidation into a few vast supranational powers, towards a new epoch in which the aspirations of small, suppressed nationalities would become anachronisms. Both Germany and Russia had embarked on policies designed to eradicate what remained of Polish cultural and political identity. The huge scale of modern armies and the power of their weapons, now rapidly mobile along railway lines constructed principally for military reasons, reduced the chances of any old-fashioned national uprising.

In the Polish lands themselves, there were signs that the old cause of independence was beginning to disintegrate. Industrial capitalism, developing most rapidly in the Russian partition, established its markets and its finance within the separate framework of the three empires, and - even where its owners were Polish - saw its interests in gradual change and reform rather than in the violent upheaval of national revolution.

(...)

But what was it, anyway, that Polish patriots wished to restore? This was not a simple question. Poland had not been an island, but a multinational state with no natural boundaries except the Baltic Sea to the north and the mountain wall of the Carpathians in the south. In its 800 years of existence, ending with the Third Partition in 1795, its frontiers had shifted all over the map of eastern Europe. To demand the 'restoration of Poland' was to meet the question:'Which Poland, of what kind?'

Two elements had dominated most of Polish history. One was the relationship between Poland and Lithuania, the huge and more primitive dukedom to the north-east which remained pagan until the end of the fourteenth century. The second was the exceptionally strong position of the Polish nobility and gentry, which became the dominant class in society in the late Middle Ages and which prevented the development of an absolute monarchy.

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.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Commission lawyers have stopped Poland's move to ban trade and plantings of genetically modified (GMO) seeds, saying it had no scientific justification, the EU's Official Journal said on Monday.
Poland's plans for what amounts to a national GMO ban, announced last year, quickly drew criticism from experts at the EU executive who routinely scrutinize any such proposals to check that they comply fully with EU law.
As tested on several occasions in the past, the Commission takes the view that if a region wants to ban GMO crops or products, such restrictions must be scientifically justified and crop-specific.
It also believes that a proposed ban mustn't be politically motivated, nor a blanket GMO restriction that might distort the EU's single trading market.
Poland did not provide new scientific evidence to justify its action, as required under EU law, said the Commission's notice published in the latest edition of the Official Journal.
There also had to be a problem specific to the member state making the request, it said.
"The Polish notification does not provide any new scientific evidence relating to the protection of the environment or the working environment," the Journal said.
"The Commission therefore considers that the national provisions notified cannot be approved," it added.
Earlier this month, France said it would activate a provision in European law to suspend the commercial use of MON 810, an insect-resistant maize developed by U.S. biotech giant Monsanto. The Commission has yet to react formally.
(Reporting by Jeremy Smith, Editing by Peter Blackburn)

The Unconditional Capitulation of Poland

 

Click for high resolution

Pilate Washing His Hands
Jan Lievens
Oil on panel, 83.8 x 105 cm
Leiden, Stedelijks Museum De Lakenhal

VATICAN CITY, APRIL 2, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Born Karol Józef Wojtyla, John Paul II left his mark occupying the third longest pontificate in the history of the Church. 

Young Karol was born in Wadowice, a small city 35 miles southwest of Krakow, May 18, 1920. 

The second of two sons born to Karol Wojtyla and Emilia Kaczorowska, his small family would not witness his rise to the papacy. His mother died in 1929, his brother Edmund, a doctor, died in 1932 and his father, a non-commissioned army officer, died in 1941. 

He made his First Holy Communion at age 9, and was confirmed at 18. Upon graduation from high school in Wadowice in 1938, he and his father moved to Krakow where Karol entered the Jagiellonian University to study literature and philosophy. 

The Nazi occupation forces closed the university in 1939, and young Karol had to work in a quarry, and then in the Solvay chemical factory to earn his living and to avoid being deported to Germany. 

In 1942, aware of his call to the priesthood, he began courses in the clandestine seminary of Krakow, run by Cardinal Adam Stefan Sapieha, archbishop of Krakow. At the same time, Karol Wojtyla was one of the pioneers of the "Rhapsodic Theatre," also clandestine.

After the Second World War, he continued his studies in the major seminary of Krakow, once it had re-opened, and in the faculty of theology of the Jagiellonian University, until his priestly ordination in Krakow on Nov. 1, 1946. 

Soon after, Cardinal Sapieha sent him to Rome where he worked under the guidance of the French Dominican, Garrigou-Lagrange. He finished his doctorate in theology in 1948 with a thesis on the topic of faith in the works of St. John of the Cross. At that time, during his vacations, he exercised his pastoral ministry among the Polish immigrants of France, Belgium and Holland.

In 1948, he returned to Poland and was vicar of various parishes in Krakow as well as chaplain for the university students until 1951, when he took up again his studies on philosophy and theology. In 1953, he defended a thesis on the ethical system of Max Scheler at Lublin's Catholic University. 

He later he became professor of moral theology and social ethics in the major seminary of Krakow and in the Faculty of Theology of Lublin. 

On July 4, 1958, he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Krakow by Pope Pius XII, and was consecrated bishop Sept. 28, 1958. 

On Jan. 13, 1964, he was nominated Archbishop of Krakow by Pope Paul VI, who made him a cardinal June 26, 1967. 

Besides taking part in the Second Vatican Council with an important contribution to the elaboration of the constitution "Gaudium et spes," Cardinal Wojtyla participated in all the assemblies of the Synod of Bishops. 

Since the start of his pontificate Oct. 16, 1978, Pope John Paul II has completed 104 pastoral visits outside of Italy, and 146 within Italy. As Bishop of Rome he has visited 317 of the 333 parishes. 

His principal documents include 14 encyclicals, 15 apostolic exhortations, 11 apostolic constitutions and 45 apostolic letters. 

The Pope has also published five books: "Crossing the Threshold of Hope" (October, 1994); "Gift and Mystery: On the 50th Anniversary of My Priestly Ordination" (November, 1996); "Roman Triptych – Meditations," a book of poems (March, 2003); "Rise, Let Us Be On Our Way" (May, 2004) and "Memory and Identity" (February, 2005). 

John Paul II has presided at 147 beatification ceremonies, proclaiming 1,338 blesseds, and 51 canonization ceremonies, canonizing 482 saints. He has held 9 consistories in which he created 231 (+ 1 in pectore) cardinals. He has also convened six plenary meetings of the College of Cardinals. 

The Holy Father has presided at 15 synods of bishops: six ordinary (1980, 1983, 1987, 1990, 1994, 2001), one extraordinary (1985) and eight special (1980, 1991, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1998(2) and 1999). 

His contact with people has exceeded that of any other Pope. More than 17,600,000 pilgrims have participated in the more than 1,160 General Audiences held on Wednesdays, and more than 8 million pilgrims participate in the events of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 alone. 

List Ambasadora Austriackiego

Der Osterreichische Botschafter
The Austrian Ambassador
Ambasador Austrii

August 6, 2008
 
Dear Mr. Milun!

I would like to congratulate you for the organization of this international concert to honor the 32Sth anniversary of the victorious second Battle of Vienna. Furthennore, I send my warm greetings to all participants and guests and would like to wish you all a pleasant and joyful event, which considering the excellent selection of composers and pieces you will certainly have.

The second siege of Vienna in 1683 and the subsequent victory after the arrival of the relief army under the supreme command of the great Polish king Jan III. Sobieski is not just a landmark episode in Austrian and Polish history, but in European history as well. However, what is more important is the fact, that it was an example of truly lived solidarity among European nations, as they were understood at that time. Witnessing the distress of a fellow country in its struggle with a powerful rival, Jan III. Sobieski was not hesitating to render every possible assistance, be it at the risk of his own life to defend not just the then borders of Europe, but the European culture and its way of life. With his selfless deed Jan III. Sobieski acted as a true European, long before this expression saw light. The Austrian people and especially the citizens of Vienna have ever since been very grateful towards Jan III. Sobieski and still keep him in their hearts and minds.

Although the year 1683 was very important in Polish-Austrian relations the bonds linking the two countries together reach far back to the lSth and 16th century and have continuously been developed since, so that even though we don't share any common border anymore we still have this mutual understanding that we are "cultural neighbors". After the fall of the iron curtain, Poland and Austria joined the European concert of nations called EU and are once again fulfilling their historical responsibility as intennediary between the Western and Eastern parts of Europe. Together we aim for the reunification of our continent and struggle to secure the EU as an area of freedom and prosperity for our future generations in a globalised and multi-polar world. In this regard I would like to mention the endeavors of our friend and former rival Turkey to contribute to our common European project. To reach this goal we shall always bear in mind the deeds of king Sobieski and act in his spirit.

Yours sincerely,
Dr. Alfred Laengle
Austrian Ambassador

Warsaw