Der am 13. Juli bei einem Autounfall tödlich verunglückte frühere polnische Aussenminister und Solidarno??-Veteran Bronislaw Geremek wurde gestern in Warschau feierlich zu Grabe getragen. Als einer der intellektuellen Wegweiser der Solidarno??-Bewegung spielte Geremek eine zentrale Rolle bei der Befreiung Polens und Osteuropas von der sowjetischen Diktatur. Dieses historische Verdienst würdigte dieser Tage der US-amerikanische Senator Raymond Lesniak:

Much credit is given to President Ronald Regan, Pope John Paul II and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa for the collapse of the Soviet Union’s stranglehold on Eastern European countries. All well deserved. That hero’s list, however, is one name short: Bronislaw Geremek, a Holocaust survivor who escaped from the Warsaw ghetto when he was 11 and hid from the Germans until the end of the war. His father was not so fortunate, dieing at Auschwitz.

The workers strike lead by Lech Walesa at the shipyards in Gdansk, with backchannel encouragement and support from the Catholic Church and its Vicar Pope John Paul II were not enough to topple the Communist regime.

The freedom movement was fortified and gained broader support worldwide when Bronislaw Geremek gave Lech Walesa, at the Lenin Shipyard in 1980, a statement of support signed by 64 leading intellectuals.

That act of defiance landed Geremek in jail but united the workers with the intellectuals and the Church and proved to be too much for the Communists to handle.

Geremek went on to become a leader of the newly elected Polish parliament and its foreign minister, leading Poland’s entry into the European Union and NATO.

He died on Sunday, July 13th. Niech odpoczywa w pokoju wiecznym (May he rest in peace.)