Posted on 05/04/2006 3:42:32 PM PDT by lizol
Jeff Jacoby: Walesa's reflections
Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe
THURSDAY, MAY 4, 2006
BOSTON His hair is white now and the day is long gone when his legs could propel him over a shipyard wall, as they did in Gdansk, Poland, in August 1980. But Lech Walesa's face is as familiar as ever and his personality just as brash and charismatic. Even now, to experience Walesa in person is to sense the gifts of leadership and daring that enabled a simple electrician to parlay a workers' protest into the Communist world's first free-trade union, and that union - Solidarity - into the engine of Poland's liberation.
I met Walesa this week at a luncheon hosted by the Grand Circle Foundation, the charitable arm of Boston's Grand Circle travel company. Speaking through an interpreter, he reflected on the nature of the force that shut down the Soviet empire, and on the role of the United States in a unipolar world.
In the 1960s and 1970s, he said, no one believed Moscow's domination of Poland could be challenged - not with 200,000 Soviet troops permanently stationed on Polish soil, and another million troops elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Nothing short of a nuclear war, Poles imagined, could ever be powerful enough to shatter the Iron Curtain.
It was then, Walesa said, "when we felt completely discouraged and totally helpless," that a Polish cardinal became pope, and began reminding his countrymen that they were not powerless to confront even the Soviet Empire. When John Paul II made his first pilgrimage to Poland in 1979, millions of Poles turned out to see and hear him. "Even the Communists and secret police came and learned to cross themselves," laughed Walesa. "Of course they didn't know the proper words, so they simply said, 'one-two-three-four-five.'
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
I'm so jealous. I was thinking of stopping by Panna Maria the next time I'm in the San Antonio area, do you think it's worth the trip?
I think it would, especially for history buffs.
http://www.pannamariatexas.com/index.html
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.