Abstract
“Polish Bishops’ Appeal to Their German Colleagues” of 18 November 1965 was one of the fifty-six letters written by the Polish Episcopate to episcopates all over the world on the occasion of the end of the Second Vatican Council. However, this one had a special character. In all letters, the brother bishops were first informed about one thousand years of Christianity in Poland, then an outline of the millennium history was given, emphasizing, if possible, common history. The Letter to the German Episcopate had a special significance symbolized by the famous words contained in it: “we grant forgiveness and we ask for forgiveness.” Twenty years after the end of the Second World War, in a communist Poland, where being anti-German (more precisely being anti-Western Germany) was an inherent feature of the official propaganda of the state, the Polish bishops undertook to write an alternative history of relations with the western neighbour.
The article examines the Appeal, presenting the background of creating the document, recalling its text and interpreting the text, using keys derived from contemporary philosophy of forgiveness, such as for example Paul Ricoeur’s and Józef Tischner’s, as well as historical documents such as letters written by the authors of the Appeal. Thanks to the alternative history described by the letter, the Appeal has served for years not only as the first step on the way to German–Polish reconciliation but also as the first political declaration using the word “forgiveness” after the Second World War.
Keywords
“Polish Bishops’ Appeal to Their German Colleagues” of 18 November 1965 was one of the fifty-six letters written by the Polish Episcopate to episcopates all over the world on the occasion of the end of the Second Vatican Council. However, this one had a special character. In all letters, the brothers bishops were first informed about the one thousand years of Christianity in Poland, then an outline of the millennium history was given, emphasizing, if possible, common history. The Letter to the German Episcopate had a special significance symbolized by the famous words contained in it: “we grant forgiveness and we ask for forgiveness.”
1
Twenty years after the end of the Second World War, in a communist Poland, where being anti-German (more precisely being anti-Western Germany) was an inherent feature of the official propaganda of the state, the Polish bishops undertook to write an alternative history of relations with the western neighbour. As Edith Heller puts it:
The situation of Poland following the 2nd World War was by no means favourable to establishing friendly relations with the Federal Republic of Germany. By moving Poland to the West, Stalin succeeded in creating a gap between Poland and Germany, a gap based on hostility and lack of trust. The wedge driven between the two states was Poland’s western border. Care for a new western border strongly attached Poland to the Soviet Union though such attachment was already formed by placing Poland within the sphere of Soviet influence. Fear . . . began to apparently disappear as late as after signing the border treaties between Poland and Germany in 1991.
2
By entering this sphere, the Appeal, an ecclesiastical and religious document, became simultaneously a text of a political dimension and played a special—dual—role. First, the Polish bishops were the first who after the Second World War, following the spirit of Christian philosophy, transferred the word “forgiveness” from the inter-individual sphere to politics. Second, thanks to the reinterpretation of history, the letter was an attempt at providing a foundation for a community alternative to the “real socialism” society, thereby performing up till now the role of the “founding act” of not only post-war Polish–German relations but also of Poland’s opening to Europe and the West.
Circumstances of Creating the Appeal
The author of the letter was Archbishop Bolesław Kominek, born in 1903, the son of a miner from the Upper Silesia region, later a cardinal and the Head of the Wrocław Diocese, a Silesian and a Polish patriot. He knew German perfectly well because he learned it from childhood at a German school. Furthermore, he always maintained close relations with Germans; for example, he was friends with the Bishop of Ruhr, Franz Hengsbach from Essen, and he had known Bishop Schaffran, bishop suffragan of Görlitz, for a long time since their studies together. In 1962 he mediated in talks between cardinals Stefan Wyszyński and Julius Döpfner and there are many signs indicating that Polish–German reconciliation was his dream. The atmosphere of the Second Vatican Council made him think about his own initiative that would be “both wise and courageous,” as he put it in one of his discussions with his friend Hansjakob Stehle, a west German journalist. 3
Throughout several nights during the Second Vatican Council, Kominek wrote a letter, right away in German, composed of nearly three thousand words. He was convinced he could be sure that the letter would meet with favourable reception from the German side. He had already held talks with the German bishops during the Second Vatican Council: “in principle, they took a favourable attitude towards Poland, some very much so,” he wrote. 4 In addition, a draft of the memorial “On the Situation of the Expelled and the Attitude of the German Nation to Their Neighbours” was at the time known at the Vatican, written by the Council of the Evangelic Church in Germany (EKW). 5 The memorial was submitted for printing not till two weeks after the publication of the Polish letter; however, its key arguments reached Rome thanks to Kominek’s friends from the Evangelic Church. The text was an attempt at standing up, in a realistic and self-critical manner, to the moral and legal aspects of the border on the Oder–Neisse line. Kominek expected that the answer from the German bishops would be in a similar tone.
On the other hand, both he and the Primate of Poland, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, who was the first to have signed the letter, realized how fierce the reaction might be of not only the authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland but also Polish society. Anti-German slogans were at the time in the mainstream of propaganda, actively co-created by Władysław Gomułka. In fact, the propaganda was not contrary to public feeling: twenty years after the Second World War people remembered very well the years of German occupation and the stereotyping of Poland’s German enemy was common. Hansjakob Stehle quotes statements made by Polish bishops upon signing the Appeal. “We will have to pay for it,” one of them was supposed to have said. 6
The History of Poles and Germans in the Appeal
The Appeal puts the history of the Second World War and earlier deterioration of Polish–German relations into a broader historical narrative, alternative to that officially developed in the People’s Republic of Poland. In this narrative, several complementary logics of thinking and a number of key notions such as “forgiveness,” “memory,” and finally the word we are used.
The primary logic of the narrative is to present all relations with the western neighbour in such a historical context where evil and injustice, though important and painful, are merely part of a certain phase, an episode in the history of flourishing neighbourhood.
The history recounted in the letter is “the story of the thousand-year development of the history of Polish civilization, with particular reference to the Germans and Poles as neighbours.” 7 Already in the part devoted to the beginnings of the Polish statehood—and at the same time Christianity in the Polish territory—a description of Germany’s positive role in Poland’s history is given: from Emperor Otto III’s pilgrimage to Gniezno, through the influence of the Magdeburg Rights and those of German merchants, artists, architects, and settlers. In the letter, “a world-renown sculptor, Wit Stwosz of Nuremberg, who was active in Krakow almost all his life” is mentioned. Reference is made to St Hedwig of Silesia, whose conduct is regarded by the bishops as “the best expression of building a Christian bridge between Poland and Germany” and many other saints. The role of the Jagiellonian University is emphasized—where Poles and Germans alike studied.
Then the worsening of relations between the two countries is depicted. “Prussians . . . have discredited everything German in Polish areas. In the historical pattern they are represented by such names as Albrecht from Prussia, Frederick the so-called Great, Bismarck, and finally, as the end of the line, Hitler. . . . A terrifyingly dark night fell over our poor fatherland,” 8 Kominek wrote, listing one after another German occupation, the concentration camps, and the losses Poland incurred. According to the letter, the country survived the war “not as a victorious state, but extremely weakened.” 9 However, the author remembered also the suffering of Germans. “We know very well how large numbers of the German population bore up under superhuman pressure exerted on their consciences, for years on end, by the National Socialists. . . . Thousands of Germans, as Christians and as Communists, shared the lot of their Polish brethren in the concentration camps.” 10 He calls the frontier on the Oder–Neisse line the “hot iron” 11 of neighbourhood. “We well understand that the Polish western border on the Oder and Neisse is, for Germany, an extremely bitter fruit of the last war of mass extinction. Part of the bitterness is caused by the sufferings of millions of German refugees and expellees.” 12
Collective Memory, Collective Forgiveness
Based on the presentation of the millennium of Polish–German relations, the narrative creates in the reader’s imagination a certain distance to the events of the first half of the twentieth century. As the last war and the years of strained relations preceding it are only an episode, it becomes much easier to think that despite great losses and pain of the present times, mutual forgiveness is possible. Therefore, it is forgiveness, not guilt, that comes to mind as the first association, the notion that plays the key role in this view of Polish–German history. 13
In diesem allerchristlichsten und zugleich sehr menschlichen Geist strecken wir unsere Hände zu Ihnen hin in den Bänken des zu Ende gehenden Konzils, gewähren Vergebung und bitten um Vergebung.
14
In this all-Christian and at the same time quite human spirit, we extend our hands to you across the benches of the Council that is drawing to an end; we grant forgiveness and we ask your forgiveness.
15
This famous sentence is to be found in the final part of the Appeal, providing a special summary. 16
Forgiveness is to be a remedy for the painful memory of injustice not only on the Polish side but also, as has clearly been pointed out, on the German side. How, however, should it be found? 17 To determine the state of Polish and German memory, 18 Paul Ricoeur’s metaphor of two poles of memory and forgetting might be of use. At the “passive end,” a phenomenon can be found that a person harmed, instead of consciously forgetting something, tries to avoid memory. It is “forgetting based on excuses, . . . focussed on the avoidance strategy, which is, in turn, motivated by an unclear aim not to know, not to learn, not to inquire into anything related to the evil done.” 19 According to the author, this leads to an excess of memory, which is negative, as memory, not accounted for internally, stays in the person harmed, causing him pain and dominating his everyday life. By contrast, at the other “active” pole, there is forgetting relying on the deliberate selection of memories. It might have an evil face when involving persistent forgetting of past events—then it leads to a state termed by Ricoeur a memory deficit. However, its strength is forgiveness. This does not mean that forgiveness should be identified with forgetting: “it is not the past event, a criminal act which is forgotten, but its sense and its place in the whole historical dialectics. . . . Forgiveness is a kind of memory healing, putting an end to mourning. . . . Forgiveness gives future to memory.” 20 But if our memory is not in balance, which could be only achieved with the skill of forgiveness, we are doomed to vacillate between the two aforementioned extremes. How thus to restore balance to memory and enable forgiveness and partial forgetting?
The Appeal provides an answer to the issue that is consistent with the Christian worldview that it expresses. Forgiveness is to be found thanks to God’s care, argue the bishops in the Appeal. However, before it happens, it is necessary to call the evil done evil on both sides. Therefore, even if the deterioration of Polish–German relations is described by the bishops as an episode, all iniquities on the Polish and German sides are successively listed, indicating who was to blame. According to Christian science, forgiveness does not, however, mean a negation of the evil done. On the contrary, it is the existence of evil that enables us to forgive, as Józef Tischner emphasizes. 21 Forgiveness clears us from the desire for retaliation; it can be an expression of love for one’s neighbour, struggle against self-love, and thus we should forgive them, for they do not know what they do. A human being, however, is not capable of clearing anyone from the sin he or she committed. It is only God, as the only objective and omniscient judge, who can expiate the guilt.
The theme of uttering and naming mutual sins plays a particularly significant role in the Appeal, as coming to grips with one’s own guilt is done in Catholicism through confession, and “to confess means to SPEAK.” 22 On this path, it is indispensable to utter, to name your own sins: “When I was silent, my bones decayed. . . . I would inform You of my sin, and I did not conceal my iniquity . . . and You forgave my iniquity forever,” says the psalmist (Psalm 32). The Catholic religion attaches great importance to the act of confession: “The man, who . . . dared to tell the other man all, experiences new security at this moment. He feels stronger, he feels lighter.”
And thus in Catholicism it is the honest naming of all iniquities and sins that enables memory to recover balance. Let us add that according to the logic of the Appeal, there is no reason for not finding exactly the same forgiveness between communities as between individuals.
Here we come to the specification of the other significant logic used in the narrative of the bishops’ letter. The Appeal is not only a story about history but also the collective revelation of iniquities and collective forgiveness, finally—collective confession, a prayer that teaches history and forgiveness. In the letter, the bishops fulfil the role of representatives of the Polish nation and take on its transgressions—assuming in a moving way the obligation of confession and offering forgiveness at the same time. Researchers dealing with societal issues indicate that individuals do not remember and do not forget in isolation. They are always part of specific communities and they communicate with others. Therefore, such terms as “communicative memory” and “collective memory” are used. 23 However, the bishops’ letter proposes “collective forgiveness.” Here, as well, to forgive means to SPEAK about mutual history, 24 mutual iniquities, and—to utter the words of sin absolution. Let us add that no comparison is made in the Appeal between injustice to Poles and to Germans, that is, whose is “greater” and whose “less significant.” The evil done requires naming, repentance, and forgiveness without any dispute over whose fate was more tragic and whether some evil acts were somehow “justified.” Because of that, the Appeal did not only give a description of injustice committed to Poles but also of Polish transgressions; it was an expression of a quite serious criticism of the Polish society, thereby being a considerable challenge due to the general anti-German feeling.
Alternative Community
“By its very nature social memory is an area of a continuous dispute between various political forces and orientations which fight for its appropriation,” Barbara Szacka writes. 25 The fight for memory and an ethical evaluation of the past are always deeply entangled in the dilemmas of the present. May be each reinterpretation of history in the democratic public sphere gets caught up in the fight of competitive narratives concerning the past. In an authoritarian state, as Poland was at the time, 26 each competitive narrative meant objection to the propaganda line imposed by the authorities. Therefore, the authorities’ reaction to the Appeal was scathing.
The Appeal was published on 18 November 1965. Although Stefan Wyszyński paid a visit to Poland’s ambassador in Rome on the eve of the letter’s publication, he did not say a word to the ambassador. 27 Moreover, it is very likely that the pope, Paul VI, did not know anything about the Appeal. However, Bolesław Kominek made a move towards notifying the Polish authorities, handing over the text of the letter to the correspondent of the Trybuna Ludu newspaper, Ignacy Krasicki, but it is not certain if the latter transferred it any further. 28 May be Władysław Gomułka began preparations for the campaign against the “Church’s treacherous interference” into his policy as early as on the date of the letter’s publication; however, they waited until Germany’s response, which was published on 5 December. “With brotherly respect we grasp the proffered hands,” the German bishops wrote, “we too beg you to forget; yes, we ask you to forgive” 29 ; however, the letter did not contain a declaration offering forgiveness, similar to that made in the Polish letter. It was suggested that a man has no power to forgive: “Forgetting is an act within the realm of human beings. The request for forgiveness is an appeal to Him who suffered injustice to see this injustice with the merciful eye of God, and to permit a new beginning,” 30 it was written. In addition, the most burning issue was omitted: the border on the Neisse–Oder line.
Although the Polish Episcopate recognized the German Episcopate’s answer as positive in an official communiqué, 31 in the private correspondence between Cardinal Wyszyński and Cardinal Döpfner, an entirely different view can be found. “Today I must openly confess to you, Your Eminence,” the then Primate of Poland wrote to Julius Döpfner in November 1970, “that the response of the German bishops to our reconciliation letter was disappointing not only to the Poles but to the public opinion worldwide as well. Our cordially stretched hands were accepted not without reservations. This is sad inasmuch as German protestants make efforts to meet Poland’s wishes in a much more evangelic spirit.” 32 “When I look back, it seems we could have formulated it more warmly,” Cardinal Döpfner admitted at a later stage. 33
Soon afterwards, the national press launched a massive attack at the Polish Episcopate. On 10 December, the first anti-Appeal articles were published in the Słowo Powszechne and Życie Warszawy. The following charges were made: treason, the willingness to return Polish Western Territories to Germany, and equal treatment of injustice committed to Poles and to Germans. The articles in the press featured deliberate distortions and tendentiously selected quotations from the Appeal. “The Appeal of the Polish bishops to the German bishops is in fact a political sabotage planned for a long term, directed against People’s Republic of Poland,” thundered Władysław Gomułka at the 5th Plenum of Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party held on 15 and 16 December 1965. 34
In a sense, it is difficult not to admit that Gomułka was right, for the narrative of the Appeal followed the third logic of thinking confirming Poland’s membership of a broader community of values: first, the Christian, and second, the European, above the post-war political status quo in Europe divided by the iron curtain. In all the cases, it was an alternative to the “socialist society,” which was being built according to the official People’s Republic of Poland’s propaganda.
From that perspective, the word of key importance in the bishops’ letter is “we.” It is “we” who forgive and it is “we” who ask for forgiveness. This phrase should be understood not as a declaration made exclusively by those who signed the letter, but by all the Poles represented by the bishops. As Ewa Domańska puts it, “categories ‘I—the other,’ ‘we—they,’ ‘ours—a stranger’ seem to be fundamental to our thinking about the world. This type of thinking is closely related to the issues of power and subordination, domination, dependence etc.” 35 It should be added that the one who can determine who is “ours” and who is “a stranger” in the society is in power. Thus, let us have a look at how the word “we” is defined in the Appeal.
According to the Appeal, forgiveness between Poles and Germans is possible, as the evil done happened in a certain broader context, that is, centuries of harmonious relations based on agreement, respect, and cooperation. The two nations are not “strangers” to each other but they are a part of one community of values rooted in, as the whole Europe, Christianity. 36
The act of restoring the community based on a certain platform of values shared by all its members is performed here.
37
It is these values that enable us to state what we should apologize for and what we can forgive. In the group specified as “we,” there are nations rooted in the Christian tradition. But according to the letter’s logic, the community of “ours” is defined on the opposite basis. Thus, if Germans are “ours” who are the “strangers”? The bishops seem to say—if someone is a Christian, he should forgive; otherwise, he is a communist. The two definitions cannot be combined; therefore each and everyone of us has a duty to make a choice. The Christian religion is also the source of European culture, thus “we” also means “Europeans.” Being a Christian and a European, you are inevitably closer to Germans than to communists, as the history of Europe is a history of Christianity, not communism. Communism, against the desire of its builders, is only a transitional state, an excrescence on a healthy tissue of Europe, like the crimes of the Third Reich.
38
In a similar spirit did Stefan Wyszyński write about the importance of the millennium celebrations for Polish culture:
Nine-year preparations for the Millennium should transform the whole of Poland internally. The fate of communism will be decided in Poland. When Poland becomes Christianized, she will happen to be such a great moral power that communism will collapse. The fate of communism will be decided not in Russia but in Poland because of her Catholicism. Poland will show the whole world how to deal with communism and the whole world will be grateful to her for it.
39
Such logic of defining Polish society requires further comment. Following the logic of the bishops’ letter, the only alternative to a communist Poland is Christian Poland. However, Christian not only in a sense of the origin of her culture but also determination of the identity of each man living in her territory. The alternative, that either you are a Christian or a communist (where Christian, according to the logic of the letter, seems to be a Roman Catholic only), does not give a third option to anyone who would not like to identify himself or herself with any of these two possibilities. This strongly present and a very conservative definition of the Pole as a Catholic suggests that following the logic in the bishops’ letter, intra-national reconciliation could only take place if citizens chose Christianity. 40 In this sense, the definition of an “alternative community” contained in the letter is not an attempt at making Polish society pluralistic but at its unconditional “conversion” from socialism to Christianity. Finally, we should add that although the letter refers to the fact that “more than six million Polish citizens, the majority of Jewish background, had to pay for this occupation with their lives,” 41 forgiveness is mentioned exclusively in the Christian context. 42
However, certain rigidity or imperfections of the Appeal did not seem to have any influence on its reception in Poland at the time; their presence comes to attention rather from today’s perspective. Then, the main reason for which not only the authorities but also the society did not receive the Appeal enthusiastically was the fact that Gomułka’s anti-German policy met with a favourable response. 43 Poles were not ready to accept severe moral criticism assuming that indisputable German guilt does not exclude Polish iniquities. This seems to be the reason that for decades the document was given a controversial reception by the society. 44 And the anti-Appeal campaign came to an end in April 1966. May be Gomułka finished it quite soon as he saw his own interest in the favourable impact of the Appeal in the West. As early as four years later, during Willy Brandt’s visit to Warsaw, a treaty was signed between the Federal Republic of Germany and the People’s Republic of Poland recognizing the border on the Oder–Neisse line.
To sum up, in spite of the imperfections seen in the Appeal from today’s perspective, it is difficult not to appreciate that regardless of all that it was an interesting attempt at introducing a new logic into general thinking. Certainly, what should be most appreciated is the philosophical content of the letter, which was an attempt at creating three types of logic in the narrative: the logic of superiority of forgiveness over guilt, the logic of collective forgiveness as the naming of iniquities, and the logic of restoration of the Catholic community in Poland (alternative to the socialist society). For decades, the inventiveness of the vision proposed by the bishops did not only provoke controversies but also inspired discussion about Polish–German relations.
Most likely, this is why following 1989 the Appeal became, in the opinion of many, the symbol of the beginning of reconciliation between Poland and Germany. 45 In his article of 8 November 1989, Adam Michnik, prior to the visit of Chancellor Helmut Kohl to Poland, assigned a special role to the letter: “This noble, wise and far-sighted letter meant the breaking down of the psychological barrier; it brought a new perspective into the thinking about Polish–German issues.” 46 The following day in his speech delivered in Poland, Helmut Kohl called the letter “a moving reconciliation address,” and the prime minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, said that it was impossible to overestimate the role of the Polish bishops’ Appeal, which generally enabled the Polish–German dialogue. 47 Instead, it is regrettable that the novelty and originality of Appeal as a political declaration of forgiveness and repentance were not continued after 1989. In most cases, they have been superseded by rather vague statements failing in no risks. 48
Footnotes
Notes
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