Sixty years ago, Polish bishops approached their German counterparts with an unexpected message of reconciliation. For the majority of Poles, this gesture came as a shock. Twenty years after the end of World War II, at the height of the Cold War, relations between Poland and then West Germany were characterized by distrust, hostility, and lack of communication.
The division of Germany had been finalized with the construction of the Berlin Wall just four years earlier. Two irreconcilable ideological blocs – the capitalist West and the communist East – were now pitted against each other on either side of the Iron Curtain. It would take four years for West Germany to begin a policy of detention following the arrival of Social Democrat Willy Brandt as Chancellor.
The painful memory of the war and the German occupation, in which 6 million people died on the Polish side and millions of Germans were expelled from the east after 1945, weighed heavily on German-Polish relations. Furthermore, disagreements over the re-drawn border between the two were a constant source of friction between Warsaw and the West German capital Bonn.
The West German government refused to recognize the post-war border, which was drawn along the Oder and Neisse rivers. As far as Bonn was concerned, the areas east of this line, including Silesia and East Pomerania, were “German Eastern Territories currently under Polish administration.” Meanwhile, communist state propaganda criticized the Germans of the young Federal Republic, which at the time was still led by the first West German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer (CDU), portraying them as arch-enemies and rebels bent on revenge and the recovery of these former territories.
Church leads to reconciliation
In this situation of deadlock, the responsibility of playing an important role in overcoming the conflict fell on the Catholic Church of both the countries. In the autumn of 1965, there were intensive contacts between German and Polish bishops on the sidelines of the Second Vatican Council in Rome. Archbishop Bolesław Kominek of Wrocław emerged as the driving force behind the negotiations.
Polish bishops planned to invite bishops from other countries to Poland in 1966, when the millennium of the Christianization of Poland would be celebrated. Kominek used this opportunity to send a message of reconciliation to fellow clerics in Germany. In his letter, he emphasized the positive aspects of the 1,000 years that Germany and Poland had been neighbors, while not shying away from mentioning Germany’s recent war crimes.
The archbishop also noted “the suffering of millions of refugees and displaced Germans” and paid tribute to German priests who had fallen victim to the Nazi dictatorship. “Thousands of Germans, both Christians and Communists, shared the fate of our Polish brothers in concentration camps,” he wrote in the letter. Kominek also stressed that recognition of the Oder–Neisse border is of existential importance for the Polish people.
‘We forgive and apologize’
The key sentence came right at the end: “In this most Christian but very human spirit, we extend our hands to you sitting on the benches of the Last Council, and we forgive and ask for forgiveness.”
The German bishops replied on December 5, 1965. “We hold your outstretched hands,” he wrote. “Terrible things have been done to the Polish people by the Germans and in the name of the German people. We know that we have to suffer the consequences of the war, which are difficult even for our country. We understand that the period of German occupation has left a burning wound that is difficult to heal even with the best will in the world.”
However, the head of the German Catholic Church did not live up to Polish expectations regarding the border dispute. He emphasized the right of German exiles to consider the areas east of the Oder and Neisse their homeland, while also acknowledging that a younger generation of Poles was now growing up there and that they too considered it as such.
“The German bishops were trying to separate ‘reconciliation’ from politics. General prayers and mutual meetings were possible, but there was no question of making any kind of political concession. […] “A clear statement about the recognition, or even limitation, of the right of the Polish people to live in their homeland,” wrote veteran Poland correspondent Edith Heller in her book “Power, Church, Politics.” [Power, Church, Politics]Published in 1992.
Kominek also made no bones about his disappointment in his memoirs: he wrote that the German response was “faint-hearted” and “inadequate”.
Communist propaganda attacked church leaders as traitors
This letter caused a wave of anger in Poland. The Communist Party-controlled media launched a hate campaign against Poland’s Primate, Stefan Wyszynski, and the Church. The bishops were accused of selling out the Polish cause of state and acting in the interests of West German insurgents.
The first secretary of the Polish Communist Party, Władysław Gomułka, saw an opportunity to weaken the Catholic Church, which was the only real opposition to the communist system in Poland at the time. He knew that the majority of Poles were on his side on this issue.
But in the end, the Polish letter showed the way forward and contributed significantly to the eventual rapprochement and rapprochement between Poland and Germany. Polish dissident Jan Józef Lipski described the bishops’ initiative as “the most far-sighted act in post-war Polish history”.
In 2015, the countries’ respective heads of state, German President Joachim Gauck and Polish President Andrzej Duda, described the exchange of letters as “an event that fundamentally changed German-Polish relations and European history.”
Today, Germany and Poland are partners and allies in the European Union and NATO. However, their relationship is currently in crisis. After the death of Pope John Paul II – who, as Archbishop of Kraków, also signed the letter to the Polish bishops – nationalist tendencies have emerged in the Catholic Church in Poland. Last summer, the former Bishop of Wrocław, Wislaw Mering, revived an old anti-German saying: “Until the end of the world, no German will be a brother of Poland.” And in the latest edition of the weekly newspaper PoliticsCommentator Adam Krzeminski wrote: “Today, only a minority accept the ‘we forgive and ask for forgiveness’ message.”
But despite this, Polish and German bishops have gathered in Wrocław with a ceremony, Mass, exhibitions and academic debates to commemorate the 60th anniversary of this historic exchange – and to lay a wreath at the grave of Bishop Kominek, who initiated the reconciliation.
This article has been translated from German.