Warsaw's Tragic History & the Death of the European Enlightenment

I was caught off guard with how modern Warsaw is. Plenty of reminders that I was in Eastern Europe (including cold and grey winter weather) yet Warsaw has skyscrapers that Budapest doesn't have.

It was July 1944. The Polish resistance, outgunned and outnumbered, was battling the Nazis for control of Warsaw. The Poles looked up and saw on the opposite side of the Vistula river, which flowed through Warsaw, the Soviet army lined up on the banks. The Poles cheered! “They have come to rescue us! They will cross over and drive out the Nazis!” But the Soviets did not cross. They stood there. Watching. And waiting. They waited until the Nazis greatly weakened themselves by pounding the Polish resistance and destroying Warsaw. Once both the Poles were decimated and the Nazis exhausted, then did the Soviet army make its move. The Nazis retreated leaving death and destruction behind. Hence, the Soviets postured themselves as the liberators of Warsaw (much like they did in Budapest). Little did the Polish people realize that they were about to be enslaved by the Soviets for the next two generations.

250,000 Poles died during World War II as the Nazis and the Soviet armies battled over Warsaw. Before the war, Warsaw had a Jewish population of 400,000. After the war, there were virtually no Jews left. During my brief tour of Warsaw, I saw a wall that marked a boundary of the former Jewish ghetto. And many of the same emotions came over me that I felt this past summer at Auschwitz: emotions of terror, disbelief and disgust mixed with anger. There is nothing left of the 400,000 Jews that lived in this city 65 years ago. (Wikipedia’s page on Warsaw is a great, quick resource about the World War II battle for Warsaw: www.wikipedia.com)

This wall in Warsaw is essentially all that is left of the Jewish ghetto built by the Nazis.

The Soviets desired to colonize and make slaves out of Poland and all of Eastern Europe. On the heels of the Jewish holocaust, the Soviets either killed or shipped to the Siberian Gulags all the intellegencia of Poland, regardless of religion. (The Soviets did this as well as in the other Eastern Europe countries). They didn’t want any skilled workers, thinkers, entrepreneurs, leaders, problem solvers, or wealthy people in any of their European colonies; all they wanted was a mindless working class of slaves that they could manipulate and extract goods from on behalf of the Soviet Union.

Like our Campus Crusade staff in Hungary, our Polish staff can all tell stories from the previous generation of relatives that simply vanished or family that were ruthlessly killed. I stayed with Robert and Beata Kowalsky, a Campus Crusade Polish staff couple with 3 beautiful young girls. Of Robert’s father’s family, only Robert’s father survived the battle of Warsaw as a 15 year old boy constantly on the move to avoid capture; the rest of his family was captured and killed. Beata’s grandfather was shipped off to Siberia because he was a blacksmith and the Soviets didn’t want him making bullets or weapons for the Polish resistance.

The Enlightenment began when on a wintery day in 1618 Rene Descartes sat next to a fire and articulated the words that not only changed Europe but world history: “I think therefore I am.” At that point an era began where the shift of authority was no longer based on the Bible and the church but based on human wisdom and reason. Man set out to build an earthly utopia that was void of God and any other authority except man himself. The Enlightenment didn’t end, I personally believe, until the fall of the Berlin wall in 1991. That symbolic act was the curtain closing on the final scene of the European Enlightenment that chronicled man’s multi-century failure to build a utopia on earth.. The harder man tries to build a man-centered Christless utopia, the more tragic are the results.

The quest for societal utopia is all but gone (albeit the Muslims today think that a world-wide society based on seventh century Arab culture is the answer). Unfortunately the vacuum left by the Enlightenment in Europe is not being filled with a return to Jesus Christ; it is being filled with Post-Modern thinking that embraces a world view that is nihilistic, fatalistic and materialistic. Shopping malls have replaced universities (which had replaced churches) as the center of society. The pursuit of materialism (i.e. the pursuit of self) is what occupies the modern European mind. The tragedies of World War II are told today by the grandparents, listened to with one ear by pre-occupied parents and pronounced boring by the children. Unfortunately, the words found posted in Auschwitz by George Santayana take on a special meaning: “The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again.”

These are the Kowalsky girls. Their parents, Robert and Beata, are on our Polish Campus Crusade team. I work closely with Robert in addressing the financial needs of our Polish ministry and staff. Above, these girls are (from the left) Carolina, Victoria and Eunice.

I almost forgot! Thanks for praying for Elizabeth! Here she is flanked by her mom and grandmother in a Budapest doctor's office moments after waking up from surgery for having her wisdom teeth pulled. There were no complications and she only took pain medicine the next day.