Winter Journey by Diane Armstrong

Author:Diane Armstrong
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Two

The sky was the colour of tombstones that Sunday morning and hung low like a ceiling about to fall. Or so it seemed to Father Krzysztof as he strode towards the church on his way to conduct Mass, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his cassock. Turning into the square, he saw a crowd gathered around the banner of the Polish Patriotic Party and stopped to hear their representative.

‘Don’t let them fool you!’ the man bawled, the veins on his temples straining with the effort to be heard. ‘The European Union is nothing but a communist plot to hoodwink the Polish nation! Make your voice heard before it’s too late! Only one party will look after your interests and protect you. Vote for us!’

On a rickety table beside him among the pamphlets were a few copies of Poland Betrayed and The Jewish World Conspiracy. Standing beside the table was Kazimierz Borowski’s thin-faced son, Edek, who had an eagle tattooed at the base of his shaven skull.

The priest walked on, shaking his head. The nationalist groups were very active in this village, just as the pre-war Endecja had been. ‘Extremists always pose as patriots,’ he muttered as he quickened his step. The older he got, the more he talked to himself, probably not a healthy sign. In the 1930s, Endecja had organised a boycott of Jewish businesses, and local thugs had stood guard outside Jewish shops, clubs in hand, to make sure no one went in. They smashed the windows and terrorised the Jews. And, to its shame, the Church had supported Endecja’s policies.

He knew this from reading ecclesiastical newspapers from the 1930s which his predecessor had left at the bottom of a drawer in the presbytery. The papers had made his blood boil. It seemed that the majority of priests in the area had eagerly embraced political extremism with its lies and prejudices. One had even instructed his parishioners not to buy bread from the Jews, warning them that they mixed dirt into the flour and spat into it.

Father Krzysztof sighed. When the middle ground collapses, everyone scrambles for the edges. Between the wars, the world had been polarised between Communism and Fascism and, faced with extinction at the hands of the Bolsheviks, the Church had supported the Fascists, but he was distressed to see the extent of the clergy’s anti-Jewish attitude. He didn’t doubt that their views had paved the ground for the bloodbath that followed. If the priests of Poland had used their pulpits to warn parishioners that denouncing Jews meant collaborating with the Germans, if more clergy had set an example of brotherly love by giving shelter to Jews, then the tragedy of both groups might have been averted. They were too bigoted to see that what took place was not only a genocidal tragedy for the Jews but also a moral catastrophe for Polish Catholicism.

But why dwell on the past? There were enough disturbing things going on today. You only had to listen to the broadcasts on Radio Maryja.

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