Polish American controversy fuels Poland's "image problem"
A major dustup is taking place among Polish Americans about the invitation issued to controversial Gdansk priest Henryk Jankowski to speak at Chicago's Polish National Day celebrations on May 3.
What is different about this confrontation is that more than 100 prominent Polish Americans are protesting the invitation. Archbishop Jozef Zycinski, chancellor of the Catholic University of Lublin, has warned the Chicago Catholic authorities not to allow "any critical comments" from Jankowski.
Two years ago, Jankowski was suspended from his pulpit for a year after making what were universally seen as anti-Semitic remarks opposing the appointment of "a minority," Bronislaw Geremek, as foreign minister in the then just-elected Solidarity coalition government.
His suspension became a focal point for yet more Polish Catholic-Jewish tension when a top Polish church official stated that Jankowski had been sidelined for being "political" rather than for making anti-Semitic statements.
The confrontation made Jankowski a hero to radical Catholic nationalists such as the Radio Maryja group and to Edward Moskal, president of the Polish-American Congress and the Polish National Alliance.
Moskal is part of the Polish-American "old-guard" whose still-considerable power has precluded significant joint ventures between U.S. Polish Catholics and U.S. Jews, including those with roots in Poland. The standoff between these groups is one of the key reasons for Poland's "image problem" and the reluctance of the government and the Polish emigre community to deny allegations that Poland, as a country, is anti-Semitic.
The Jankowski row is also part of an internal ideological and political ferment within the Polish Catholic Church. The Vatican has attempted without much success to rein in Radio Maryja, whose activists have attacked feminists, Solidarity reformers, Jews in general and George Soros in particular for being a threat to today's Poland.
However, there may be a new willingness, both here and in the United States, to challenge the radicals.
A petition signed by Polish American protesters criticized Moskal for the Jankowski invitation and stated that the visit would "reinforce the false and wrongful image of Poland and Polonia as anti-Semitic." The petition notes that Jankowski "has compared the Jewish religious and ethnic symbol, the Star of David, to the swastika and hammer and sickle, symbols of the world's two most criminal totalitarian systems."
Moskal struck back, attacking "pseudo-intellectuals" for trying to muzzle Jankowski. He said the May 3 date was chosen to rally "Polonia in the fight against political oppression and the incursion of outside interests, evils which also have been the targets of Father Jankowski's efforts."
Moskal's "pseudo-intellectuals" read like a "Who's Who" of Polonia in the United States. Among some of those who signed the petition are: novelist Stanislaw Baranczak and his wife Anna Baranczak, both at Harvard University; World War II underground activists and writers Jan Karski and Jan Nowak; Ambassador Nicholas Rey; Witold Sulimirski; historians Piotr S. Wandycz of Yale, Anna Cieciala of the University of Kansas, Mary Cygan of the University of Connecticut, Thaddeus V. Gromada of New Jersey City State University, M.B. Biskupski of St. John Fisher College in Rochester, N.Y.; political scientist Andrzej Korbonski of the University of California at Los Angeles; scientists Andrzej Bytnerowicz and Teodor Przymusinski of University of California, Riverside; and Edward Pilatowicz, research director for Price-Pfister.
The Polish Catholic Church has also begun speaking out abroad, condemning anti-Semitic statements by Poles associated with the church. That was the gist of Archbishop Zycinski's Feb. 29 discussion in Washington on Catholic-Jewish relations in Poland.
His speech was sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, B'nai B'rith International and the National Polish American-Jewish American Council. Zycinski had already called "intellectually irresponsible" the remarks by Ryszard Bender, a professor at the Catholic University, who said that Auschwitz was "only a labor camp."
Poland's "image" is also finally getting attention from some parliamentarians and government folks as they begin to focus on developing Polish brand-name products for export. That's needed, too.
A Swedish manager based in Ukraine who sells Volvo trucks at a fast clip gave one example of how Poland's image needs to be updated to reflect reality. Volvo factories in Wroclaw have the highest quality record of all Volvo plants worldwide, he said, but you can't persuade the Ukrainians that this true.
"We have different delivery times. It may take 10 to 12 weeks to get a truck delivered from Sweden but maybe only two to three weeks for one from Poland, but some of them say, 'no, I don't want one from Poland. I'll wait for one from Sweden.' They don't see that Poland is a leader in quality."
Who knows, maybe Poland will surprise the world yet again and become a significant player in the fast-moving "dot.com" world. It is currently the only emerging market in the region with an IT sector on the stock market.
There is one major privatized IT company in Hungary, none in the Czech Republic and five major ones in the top 20 companies on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. ING Barings' IT analyst Benita Mikolajewicz says there are another dozen listed IT companies "and probably a thousand or more startups."
The just begun First Tuesday meetings already involve 250 people. The last one was at the Warsaw Polytechnic University's business school. The only problem if it is one is that consultants and eager investors seemed to outnumber the "dot.com" entrepreneurs by a five-to-one ratio.
