[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 153 (Wednesday, October 30, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H6929-H6930]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       HONORING THE LIFE OF TADEUSZ MAZOWIECKI, PREMIER OF POLAND

  (Ms. KAPTUR asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, it is with gratitude but heavy heart that I, 
on behalf of the people of the United States, the Polish Caucus of this 
House, and our region of Ohio, in particular, extend deepest sympathy 
to the people of Poland on the passing of ex-Premier of Poland Tadeusz 
Mazowiecki.
  During his exceptional and transformative life, Premier Mazowiecki 
played a leading role in ushering in the first era of liberty that 
Poland had been afforded in modern history. Poland has assumed a 
pivotal and leading role in the European Union. History is still 
recording its rich, elegiac, and poignant history in the struggle to 
defeat tyranny and give rebirth to freedom.
  As The New York Times reported this week, Premier Mazowiecki became 
the first non-Communist to head an Eastern Bloc nation since the late 
1940s. Solidarity in Poland grew with his engagement as Poland led the 
anti-Communist movement in occupied Europe. Premier Mazowiecki's 
leadership of Poland at a time of critical change toward a democratic 
state has secured for him a permanent place in the history of a free 
Poland in Europe. He lived to see Poland's admission to NATO and 
Poland's growing cooperation within the world of nations.
  An accomplished literary figure, intellectual, and Roman Catholic 
thinker and writer, Premier Mazowiecki embodied the meaning of a 
renaissance man. His imprisonment by the Communist Party for his 
progressive beliefs never dampened his spirit. He was a freedom fighter 
in word and deed.
  Mr. Speaker, may his legacy inspire future generations to live with 
the courage and intellectual rigor he demonstrated in each decade of 
his life; and may white eagles fly over his memory and Poland's 
historic accomplishments as she walks with free nations in liberty's 
march.

                [From the New York Times, Oct. 28, 2013]

          Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Ex-Premier of Poland, Dies at 86

                          (By Douglas Martin)

       Tadeusz Mazowiecki, who went from editing small Roman 
     Catholic intellectual publications to becoming prime minister 
     of Poland--and the first non-Communist to head an Eastern 
     bloc nation since the late 1940s--died on Monday in Warsaw. 
     He was 86.
       The Polish government announced the death. President 
     Bronislaw Komorowski, ordered flags on government buildings 
     to be flown at half-staff.
       Mr. Mazowiecki, a journalist by profession, worked quietly 
     for years to ease restrictions on individual rights and 
     helped form the Solidarity trade union movement, which gained 
     the leadership of Poland's national legislature in August 
     1989. By the end of that year, the Berlin Wall had fallen, 
     Communist governments in Moscow's other satellite states had 
     collapsed and the Cold War division of Europe was over.
       In a message of condolences, Chancellor Angela Merkel of 
     Germany, who grew up in Communist East Germany, said that Mr. 
     Mazowiecki made ``an unforgotten contribution to overcoming 
     authoritarian injustice and to the unity of Europe.''
       In the summer of 1980, a chain of labor disturbances rocked 
     Poland. The focus was the Gdansk shipyard, where Lech Walesa 
     led a strike to demand higher pay and the restitution of a 
     fired worker. Mr. Mazowiecki (his

[[Page H6930]]

     full name is pronounced tah-DAY-oosh mah-zoh-VYET-skee) 
     helped broaden it into an antibureaucratic social movement 
     that became known as Solidarity.
       He and his friend Bronislaw Geremek, a historian, persuaded 
     64 leading intellectuals, scholars, scientists and cultural 
     figures to sign a petition that read in part: ``In this 
     struggle the place of the entire progressive intelligentsia 
     is at their side. That is the Polish tradition, and that is 
     the imperative of the hour.''
       Mr. Walesa thanked Mr. Mazowiecki and told him that he had 
     a continued need for help from intellectuals in addressing 
     government officials. Mr. Mazowiecki helped write the 
     historic Aug. 31 agreement that ended the strike and 
     established Solidarity by guaranteeing workers' rights to 
     form independent trade unions with the right to strike.
       The Communist government nonetheless felt threatened by 
     Solidarity's mounting influence, and declared martial law on 
     Dec. 13, 1981, making Solidarity and other pro-democracy 
     groups illegal. As tanks rolled through Warsaw, Mr. 
     Mazowiecki was arrested and imprisoned for more than a year. 
     After his release, he was again one of Mr. Walesa's closest 
     advisers.
       The Polish economy worsened, and in 1988 Mr. Walesa and Mr. 
     Mazowiecki coordinated a strike at the Gdansk shipyard. That 
     strike brought no concessions. But a second, bigger strike 
     brought the Communists to the negotiating table.
       The Polish primate, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, appointed Mr. 
     Mazowiecki a mediator, and he arranged the series of talks 
     between the Communists and Solidarity that led to plans for 
     quasi-free parliamentary elections in which a newly legal 
     Solidarity would be allowed to participate.
       In the June 1989 vote, Solidarity won overwhelmingly in the 
     districts it was allowed to contest and, after parliamentary 
     maneuvering with minor parties, was able to form a 
     government. Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, head of the Communist 
     government, asked Mr. Walesa for three candidates, of which 
     he would select one as a Solidarity prime minister. He chose 
     Mr. Mazowiecki. Many believed the Vatican influenced his 
     choice, given Mr. Mazowiecki's role as an influential editor 
     of Catholic weeklies and monthlies that promoted the social 
     gospel underlying Solidarity's ideology.
       Mr. Mazowiecki's V-for-victory sign to the chamber on 
     appointment became the symbol of Poland's triumph over 
     Communism.
       The Communists retained control of the armed services, the 
     police and the secret service, and Mr. Mazowiecki had to 
     pledge to keep Poland in the Warsaw Pact, Moscow's military 
     alliance. Still, he said in 2004, ``I had this very strong 
     conviction that we will make it, that we will be able to 
     build the foundations for a democratic state.''
       He promised no ``witch hunts'' against the old government, 
     saying it was ``right and wise'' to offer democracy to all 
     Poles. When asked if he would be a Catholic prime minister or 
     a prime minister of Solidarity, he replied: ``Is there any 
     contradiction between the two? I would like to reconcile the 
     two.''
       At first, Mr. Mazowiecki told an interviewer, he was 
     ``terrified.'' With Poland facing staggering foreign debt, 
     hyperinflation and a bankrupt treasury, he had reason to be. 
     He had no choice but to accept harsh, unpopular conditions--
     including a wage freeze and an end to consumer subsidies--to 
     secure a $700 million loan from the International Monetary 
     Fund.
       With no economic experience and little charisma, he was 
     defeated when he ran for president in 1990. Mr. Walesa was 
     elected.
       Tadeusz Mazowiecki was born on April 18, 1927, in the city 
     of Plock, in central Poland. His brother died in a Nazi 
     concentration camp in World War II.
       Mr. Mazowiecki studied law at the University of Warsaw but 
     did not graduate. In 1953 he began editing a Catholic weekly, 
     but was eventually fired because of his opposition to the 
     Communist government. He started an organization of Catholic 
     intellectuals and a new Catholic monthly.
       In 1961 he was elected to the Polish Parliament, where he 
     led the opposition to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia 
     in 1968 and unsuccessfully pushed for an investigation of the 
     police massacre of striking Gdansk shipyard workers in 1971. 
     As a result, he was barred from running for re-election in 
     1972. He then devoted himself to building alliances between 
     the intelligentsia of the left and the fledgling Polish labor 
     movement.
       Mr. Mazowiecki, a tall, gaunt man with large, sad eyes, 
     went on to hold various official and unofficial posts in 
     Poland's government. In 1992 he was appointed envoy of the 
     United Nations to war-torn Bosnia. He resigned in 1995 over 
     what he regarded as the international community's 
     insufficient response to atrocities there.
       He was married twice; both wives died. He had three sons, 
     Wojciech, Adam and Michal.

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