TRUTH DOES NOT LIKE DIPLOMACY
Fr. Ireneusz Skubiś, The Honourable Editor-in-Chief of ‘Niedziela’
In 2006 a Jewish man from Argentina – Artur Draifinger paid a visit to the editorial office of ‘Niedziela’. He arrived in Poland in order to follow his war past. At the end of the war in Warsaw, during a round-up his mother got lost. As a 6-year-old boy, with the help of Poles, he got to Częstochowa under care of Antoni Marchewka – the same person who founded the post-war ‘Niedziela’ with Zofia Kossak-Szczucka. Fr. Marchewka placed the boy at the church of St. Barbara. The child was in Częstochowa for some time – Mr. Artur does not remember how long - under care of a woman – it was probably Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, who lived in our town at that time and wrote her memories from Birkenau, published under the title ‘From abyss’. Later the priest took the boy to an orphanage in Cracow. One day his exhausted mother got to there, whom he recognized through her smell – Mr. Artur cried with these memories. He also said that his parents had decided not to talk about Holocaust. However, after their death he decided to arrive in Poland give a testimony of the truth. I found out from internet that Mr. Artur had died in Argentina the previous year, and his daughter had published a book about her father.
I would like to refer the aforementioned example to what has been happening in Poland recently in connection with Holocaust. Among the others, the prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki was attacked for his statement in Munich. However, he told the truth: during the war there were blackmailers, informers, and those were not only Poles but also the Ukrainians, Jews – it has been proven. Some people say that the prime minister’s statement did not include any diplomacy. It must be said clearly that here it is not all about the truth. Certainly, one must be wise and reasonable but one must also know that the superior issue is the truth and it must be expressed in a clear way.
Truth does not like diplomacy. It follows what Christ said: ‘May your speech be yes-yes, no-no’ (Mt 5.37). So, it is not so bad, that the man – even holding the supreme post- speaks like the man. And that there is the world of some unclear assumptions or purposes of the great worldly financiers – so we do not have any influence on it. Truth is the most important. And the truth about the Second World War is that we lost 6 million citizens, including 3 million Poles of Jewish origin – those were our citizens! So, Holocaust is our common cry and grief, deep harm which we suffered from Nazis Germany and Bolshevik Russia.
Translated by Aneta Amrozik
Niedziela 9/2018 (4 III 2018)