Sławomir Korzan’s speech during 40th anniversary of the imposition of martial law in Poland by the statue of General Thaddeus Kosciuszko in front of the White House in Washington, DC. Dec, 13, 2021
A message for younger generation
Good evening, fellow Poles and Americans, citizens of two free countries.
Thank you all for being here and coming out in remembrance of our history.
It is a privilege to speak to you today here by the statue of Tadeusz Kosciuszko in front of the White House in Washington, DC.
We have gathered today on December 13th 2021.
Exactly 40 years ago an oppressive regime declared martial law in Poland.
What a sad anniversary.
The communist regime realized that after almost 4 decades, their control and suppression of the Polish nation may be coming to an end.
The communists knew the only reason why they were still ruling Poland to that day was because they were planted there by Soviet Russian invading forces at the end of the II World War.
Together with Russians they terrorized and brutally forced the Polish nation into submission.
Some of those ruling “apparatchiks” were foreigners. Some of them were traitors of Poland. Some were indoctrinated weaklings. Some were all sort of opportunists who didn’t care about the rest.
Many others were ordinary people with families simply seeking to survive in the face of a hostile regime.
Those apparatchiks were not up to the task of representing the Polish people. They lacked the skills to govern the country. Loyalty and blind obedience to the ideology were more important than talent, skills, ingenuity or entrepreneurship. Despite this, they ruled and robbed the country.
To mask the miserable reality of their ruling they used brainwashing propaganda of “success”. Slogans of “equality, freedom, social justice, progressive society, prosperity”, the list goes on and on. These were bare lies. In reality, the communists impoverished the Polish people to such an extent that currency was almost worthless; food and other essential goods were “purchased” by ration cards.
You needed ration cards to buy a limited quantity of basic life sustaining necessities like meat, wheat flour, petrol and other. On top of that there were chronic shortages of almost everything.
Just a few examples:
Walking into the grocery store – it came to the point that all the shelves were stocked with nothing but vinegar and salt.
We waited in a queue in front of the shoe store for 48 hours to buy a pair of shoes. When that store finally received the shipment, madness erupted inside and out. Only a portion of the people in line got a pair.
To get the cement for construction, the wait time was several months.
The monthly wage for a microbiologist working in the hospital was equivalent to approximately $10.
For comparison, the cost of a hotdog in Austria at the time was $2.50.
These were the results brought onto the Polish nation by a centrally-planning socialist regime, a chosen few who thought they knew everything better. Who thought that they must think for you, make appropriate decisions for you, tell what you should and shouldn’t do, and who tried to watch your every step.
Those apparatchiks took on roles they could not handle – trying to govern a country, they bankrupted Poland.
This was the Polish People’s Republic socialist-communist paradise.
A carnival of incompetence, negligence, absurdity and enslavement.
In the business environment of a free-enterprise economy, such a breed of people with such mentality and catastrophic lack of needed skills would be fired instantly, let alone even be considered for the position.
Poland paid a heavy price for their terror, persecution, exploitation and incompetence. Blood, suffering, and impoverishment were a few of their “accomplishments”…
…4 decades of communist occupation of Poland…
The toll and legacy of their occupation still lingers in Poland to this day.
Martial law was cunningly declared by traitors. The posters announcing martial law were secretly printed in Russia.
Fearing they would not be able to maintain their grip on the people, the traitors even begged the foreign country Russia for military intervention in Poland.
Another modern day Targowica.
What were the immediate results of martial law?
Loss of employment, surveillance, night house searches and arrests, beating and interrogations, and curfew. Brutal political oppression, imprisonment and killings.
Military, milicja and zomo patrols on the streets, entire cities blocked-off, crumbled transportation, censorship of media, mail and telephone calls, closed schools and universities…
A country of 36 million people was brought to a brutal halt.
In 1981, President Ronald Reagan’s “Address to the Nation About Christmas and the Situation in Poland” was an immediate response of the free world.
Martial law was lifted in 1983, however the paralysis and depression dragged on in one form or another for years until the transformation in 1989. In the meantime hundreds thousand of Poles emigrated.
Despite all of their efforts, the communists could not prevail.
Polish patriotism, love for freedom and deeply engraved values of the Catholic Faith stood in the way.
“God, Honor, Fatherland”
that is the Polish motto which our enemies had to face for hundreds of years.
The atheist communists could not suppress the Polish Catholic Church as they did in other Soviet-occupied countries.
They tried every tool to crush the Church: surveillance, imprisonment, even torturing and murdering the priests.
The common sense of God’s natural law was more important to Poles than those of temporary oppressors.
The Pontificate of Pope John Paul II and especially his historic 1979 pilgrimage to Poland with the message “do not be afraid” was a mortal blow to communists.
Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński’s stance, the bravery of countless heroes of the Polish Catholic Clergy, and the steadfast resistance of the overwhelming majority of the Catholic Polish nation formed the barrier which could not be broken.
Our great polish hero and martyr, the bestially tortured and murdered Father Jerzy Popieluszko, openly preached to his people: “Conquer evil with good”.
The Church’s respect for human dignity, the message of truth courageously propagated by the church even in the face of persecution and violent death – this fueled the people in Poland and signaled and spread the fall of the regimes throughout all of occupied Europe.
Let this 40th anniversary of these tragic events serve as a warning to our youth today; to be vigilant and courageous in the face of false comfort and lies.
“Equality, social justice, distribution of wealth…” these are the same slogans under which our oppressors marched in Poland, that we must be alert to now.
Just a year and a half ago this very statue of General Tadeusz Kosciuszko was vandalized by rioters revolting in the name of equality, rights and justice.
What a tragic irony.
This is the statue of a hero who fought for the independence of both Poland and the United States and liberty for all.
After serving as a general in George Washington’s army fighting for America’s independence, Kosciuszko appointed his friend Thomas Jefferson as the executor of his will.
He requested that his back pay and the proceeds of his 500 acre estate in Ohio, given as a reward for his service, be used to purchase the freedom of enslaved African-Americans and to provide them with education.
Revolting progressives… What a lunatic festivity of empowered ignorance.
We live in a free country for now, but the disease is spreading.
Beware of lies. Do not let yourself be fooled by false, toxic ideologies. The process and the outcome most likely will impoverish and suppress you.
Beware of those who tell you that “you don’t need to earn to have it”, that you deserve something.
Beware of totalitarian ideologies: marxism, communism, socialism, democratic socialism, leftism, whatever they are being called.
These will enrich a crooked few but bring terrible suffering and impoverishment to millions.
As proven time after time, the revolutions eat their own children in the process.
Such ideologies will always fall, but only after leaving behind a sea of terror, atrocities and misery.
In a nutshell communism is a lie. Communism is not a political system, it is a disease.
Knowledge about martial law and communist-socialist occupation in Poland should be treated as a warning to our younger generation of what kind of results will come to fruition by permitting a totalitarian regime to be created.
When such a regime solidifies, people at the top of this perverted ideology will want to decide with a sense of pride and superiority over almost every detail of other people’s lives.
Attempts to question or debate their stance is a sure path for condemnation and punishment. They believe they know better. In their view, you are categorically and unquestionably obliged to obey their orders. If not, their political apparatus will use its full force against you to protect their reign.
Young people should not use their abilities just to naively read, listen, watch and memorize fractions of some utopian manifestos and bits and pieces of unchecked information. People can get the knowledge from what already happened. History repeats itself.
Knowledge of history helps us to understand the present and to predict the future.
By knowing the events which took place in Poland just 40 years ago, it is easier to protect ourselves from falling into such traps and becoming victims of sick and absurd ideologies.
Instead of being manipulated, a man who learns the facts can think critically, and logically search for the truth.
Only the truth is interesting and worth pursuing.
God bless Poland and God bless the United States of America