The Light from the East

The Pope arrived in the United States on the first day of October.

Forty years before that day, on the first day of October in 1939, in Poland the crackle and the boom of guns stopped. That day the last Polish soldiers, begrimed and ragged, dropped their arms. The pall of death spread over that melancholy country. The Germans, a new, brutal breed of Germans, had conquered it. Their then allies, the Russians, a new, brutal breed of Russians, poured in from the east. Between them they divided Poland. In Cracow, the sacramental city, the German viceroy of Poland, Hans Frank, set up his retinue and palace. The Russians would deport thousands of Poles. The Germans would tell them that they were slaves, close their schools and most of their churches, for the purpose of starving their spirit, and not only their flesh, into submission. Karol Wojtyla, a plain Polish draftee from around Cracow, was among those millions of potential slaves.

JL

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John Lukacs

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The Pope arrived in the United States on the first day of October.

Forty years before that day, on the first day of October in 1939, in Poland the crackle and the boom of guns stopped. That day the last Polish soldiers, begrimed and ragged, dropped their arms. The pall of death spread over that melancholy country. The Germans, a new, brutal breed of Germans, had conquered it. Their then allies, the Russians, a new, brutal breed of Russians, poured in from the east. Between them they divided Poland. In Cracow, the sacramental city, the German viceroy of Poland, Hans Frank, set up his retinue and palace. The Russians would deport thousands of Poles. The Germans would tell them that they were slaves, close their schools and most of their churches, for the purpose of starving their spirit, and not only their flesh, into submission. Karol Wojtyla, a plain Polish draftee from around Cracow, was among those millions of potential slaves.