[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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