Aug. 1 marked the 60th Anniversary of the beginning of the Uprising. Please let me use this opportunity to address you, the people of Warsaw, to let you know that your struggle is not forgotten.

Although we had no relatives nor neighbors of Polish descent, I clearly remember Poland being a country which my parents felt strongly about. When my mother spoke of Poland, it was often with sorrowful tears at the terrible price paid by the people who had suffered so much. I began elementary school in 1957 knowing as much or more about Poland in 1944 as I knew about events which had happened in my own country. Mother had taught me to have reverence for the people who had stood proud in the arrogant face of the evil assaults of the Nazis. The furious storms of murder that assailed your people still are unimaginable to me. History still has given me no satisfactory explanation. How could civilization have become so contaminated that such slaughter could prevail?

Later when the Soviets again denied the dignity and dominion of the Polish nation, my mother spoke in awe of the Polish determination for freedom which would not concede defeat. It was no surprise then, even years after her death, that I closely followed the actions of the workers and Lech Wałęsa. As they forced the issues of freedom and self-government upon the leadership in Moscow. To me, far away in the USA, these resolute heroes of Poland were confronting and challenging one of the most powerful nations on Earth. Their cause was their unity, and their unity gave them their strength.

Although I do not pretend to know much about the internal machinations of governments in general nor of Communism specifically, it seems to me that the Soviets eventually granted the Poles a trace of freedom because her people would NOT be silenced. Their tremors of defiance became the windstorm of rebellion. The only way to govern Poland was to obscure the tremors of discontent.

I am truly undereducated in world events, may be naive, and do not fully understand the events leading up to the fall of the Iron Curtain. Nonetheless, I feel certain that the Curtain did not fall because of pressure from outside but due to pressures from within. A great deal of credit must be paid to the insistence of the unified Polish workers who demanded civil liberties at their workplaces and civil rights for their society.

So now, I started this open letter to the people of Warsaw by writing about the 1944 Uprising and have leaped ahead to more recent events. Yet there is a clear pattern here: the absolute refusal of the Polish people to be conquered, to be fooled, to succumb to the domination of evil. Please know, as you commemorate your dead, that you are admired by this stranger far away. Your champions of the past are also my inspiration. Your steadfast thirst for freedom is often a compass by which I set my own course. As my mother taught me well, "Nothing can conquer a people who will stand against tyranny."

With deepest admiration and appreciation,

Roberta Freeman
Huntsville, Alabama
USA