Editor’s note: This article first appeared at The American Spectator.
It was October 19, 1984—30 years ago this week. A gentle, courageous,
and genuinely holy priest, Jerzy Popieluszko, age 37, found himself in a
ghastly spot that, though it must have horrified him, surely did not
surprise him. An unholy trinity of three thugs from communist Poland’s
secret police had seized and pummeled him. He was bound and gagged and
stuffed into the trunk of their cream-colored Fiat 125 automobile as
they roamed the countryside trying to decide where to dispatch him. This
kindly priest was no less than the chaplain to the Solidarity movement,
the freedom fighters who would ultimately prove fatal to Soviet
communism—and not without Popieluszko’s stoic inspiration.
The ringleader this October day was Captain Grzegorz Piotrowski, an
agent of Poland’s SB. Unlike Jerzy, who grew up devoutly religious,
Piotrowski was raised in an atheist household, which, like the communist
despots who governed Poland, was an aberration in this pious Roman
Catholic country. The disregard for God and morality made Piotrowski an
ideal man for the grisly task ahead, which he assumed with a special,
channeled viciousness.
Piotrowski’s first beating of the priest that evening was so severe
that it should have killed him. Jerzy was a small man afflicted with
Addison’s disease. He previously had been hospitalized for other
infirmities, including (understandably) stress and anxiety. But somehow,
the priest was managing to survive as he fought for his life in the
cold, dark trunk of the Fiat. In fact, somehow he unloosened the ropes
that knotted him and extricated himself from the car. He began to run,
shouting to anyone who could hear, “Help! Save my life!”
He was run down by Piotrowski, a dedicated disciple of what a Polish
admirer of Jerzy, Pope John Paul II, would dub the Culture of Death. “I
caught up with him and hit him on the head several times with the
stick,” Piotrowski later confessed. “I hit him near or on the head. He
fell limp again. I think he must have been unconscious. And then I
became—never mind, it doesn’t matter.”
It did matter. It certainly mattered to the helpless priest. What
Piotrowski became was something altogether worse. He seemed overtaken by
another force. As recorded by authors Roger Boyes and John Moody in
their superb book, Messenger of the Truth, which is now a gripping documentary,
Piotrowski’s accomplices thought their comrade had gone mad, “so wild
were the blows.” It was like a public flogging. Jerzy’s pounding was so
relentless that it wouldn’t be misplaced to think of Christ’s scourging
at the pillar. This young man in persona Christi, not much
older than Jesus Christ at his death agony, was being brutally tortured.
It was a kind of crucifixion; the kind at which communists uniquely
excelled.
One is tempted to say that Piotrowski beat the hell out of Father
Jerzy, but such would be inappropriate and inaccurate for such a man of
faith. Really, the hell was coming out of the beater, in all its demonic
force and fury.
After another round of thrashing, Piotrowski and his two fellow
tormentors ramped up the treatment. They grabbed a roll of thick
adhesive tape and ran it around the priest’s mouth, nose, and head,
tossing him once again in the vehicle, like a hunk of garbage on its way
to the heap.
Though he could barely breathe or move, Father Jerzy somehow again
pried open the trunk as the car continued to its destination. This set
Piotrowski into a rage. He stopped the vehicle, got out, looked sternly
at the priest, and told him that if he made even one more sound, he
would strangle him with his bare hands and shoot him. Boyes and Moody
report what happened next: “He [Piotrowski] replaced the gun and lifted
[his] club. It came down on the priest’s nose, but instead of the sound
of cartilage breaking, there was a plop, like a stick hitting the
surface of a puddle.”
The perpetrators didn’t realize it quite yet, but it was the final,
deadly blow. The next time they saw Father Jerzy, they had no doubt.
The killers drove to a spot at the Vistula River. They tied two heavy
bags of stones, each weighing nearly 25 pounds, to the priest’s ankles.
They lifted him in a vertical position above the water and then quietly
let him go. He sunk into the blackness below them. It was 10 minutes
before midnight, October 19, 1984. “Popieluszko is dead,” announced
Lieutenant Leszek Pekala to his collaborators in this revolting, sad
crime. The third helper, Lieutenant Waldemar Chmielewski, solemnly and
simply affirmed, “That’s right.”
They drove away, downing a bottle of vodka to try to numb what they
had done. Pekala thought to himself as he drank, “Now we are murderers.”
Indeed they were. Of course, so was the system they represented. It
and its handmaidens had consumed countless Jerzy Popieluszkos and tens
of millions of others whose names tragically will never be remembered on
the anniversary of their deaths.
This priest, however, was remembered, by the millions. When he didn’t
show for 7:00 a.m. Mass the next morning, his parishioners were
immediately alarmed. This wasn’t like the loyal and punctual man of the
cloth. A search for his whereabouts quickly commenced. It would take
some time, but the truth eventually prevailed, as it did against
communism generally. Among those sickened by the news was a Polish
priest in the Vatican, Karol Wojytla—Pope John Paul II. The shocked
pontiff could relate: he had experienced many fellow Poles and priests
killed by totalitarianism. He himself was a survivor. The communists had
wanted him dead as well; they tried to assassinate him three years
earlier.
And like John Paul II, Jerzy Popieluszko’s torment at the hands of
devils was not in vain. Millions of Poles poured out of their homes and
into churches to pay him homage, as they had for their native son, Karol
Wojtyla, back in June 1979—a historic, life-changing visit that a young
Jerzy helped coordinate. Ironically, Jerzy had been charged with
working between the Vatican and Polish Ministry of Health to arrange
emergency safety measures during that trip. Then, too, he had the
mission of protecting people from harm—harm by communism.
Ultimately, Jerzy Popieluszko’s struggle, like that of his pope, was
not in vain. As Tertullian once put it, the blood of the martyrs is the
seed of the Church. The communists could not extinguish Poles’ desire
for the Church, for God, and for freedom. It would take another five
years after his death, but the saintly priest’s demise had further
fueled the flames for the torch of freedom and the corresponding crash
and burn of communism.
In retrospect, Jerzy’s murder in 1984 marked the mid-point between
two cataclysmic events that put nails in the coffin of communism: John
Paul II’s June 1979 visit to Poland and the crucial free elections held
in Poland in June 1989. Those elections, more than anything else,
signaled the coming collapse of communism. Mikhail Gorbachev later said
that when those elections were held in Poland, he knew it was all over.
It was no coincidence that the Berlin Wall fell five months later.
Father Jerzy Popieluszko was one of many martyrs at the hands of
atheistic communism. But his cause was an especially significant one.
His service and death were not in vain.
Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. His latest book is 11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative. His other books include The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor and Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.
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