The Secret of Solidarity

Travel-tired eyes were soothed by the soft sunlight as we entered the Jesuit House at 61 Rako-wiecka Street in Warsaw. We were shown the remains of St. Andrew Bo-bola, cruelly martyred by the Cossacks in 1657, his relics carried to safety by Polish soldiers during the Warsaw Rising in 1944. The chapel is built over the remains of more recent martyrs: during the 1944 uprising, Nazi soldiers cornered sixty civilians, many of them Jesuit priests, in the basement and lobbed hand grenades into the closed space. Forty-four perished; some of the wounded managed to escape before the Nazis set fire to the butchery. We had arrived in Poland.

Outside the Jesuit building is one of the many markers that dot the cityscape, commemorating another Nazi atrocity. Nothing marks the Commu-nist regime’s prison at the end of the block, seven of its stories buried beneath the ground.

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Patricia B. Bozell

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Travel-tired eyes were soothed by the soft sunlight as we entered the Jesuit House at 61 Rako-wiecka Street in Warsaw. We were shown the remains of St. Andrew Bo-bola, cruelly martyred by the Cossacks in 1657, his relics carried to safety by Polish soldiers during the Warsaw Rising in 1944. The chapel is built over the remains of more recent martyrs: during the 1944 uprising, Nazi soldiers cornered sixty civilians, many of them Jesuit priests, in the basement and lobbed hand grenades into the closed space. Forty-four perished; some of the wounded managed to escape before the Nazis set fire to the butchery. We had arrived in Poland.

Outside the Jesuit building is one of the many markers that dot the cityscape, commemorating another Nazi atrocity. Nothing marks the Commu-nist regime’s prison at the end of the block, seven of its stories buried beneath the ground.