The May Day Question

Will the Pope make his planned homecoming visit?

Though it is still more than six weeks away, Pope John Paul II's scheduled visit to his homeland has already set off a deepening struggle between Poland's military regime and the underground leaders of the banned Solidarity union. Last week former Union Leader Lech Walesa was detained for questioning by police for the third time in seven days. Yet after his release, Walesa went ahead with a planned press conference in which he reminded the government of Premier Wojciech Jaruzelski that Solidarity supporters "remain and will remain a moral force without which Poland cannot overcome its crisis."

Neither side wants to risk a violent showdown that might jeopardize the Pope's visit. But that has not prevented a series of prudent skirmishes. The Communist leadership hopes the trip will demonstrate to the world that life in Poland has returned to normal. As if to emphasize that fact, Walesa received permission to resume the job of electrician, which he once held in the Gdansk shipyard. Still, the government during the week arrested some 30 Solidarity supporters suspected of planning unofficial protest demonstrations for the May 1 workers' holiday. At his press conference, Walesa protested that the union members had no intention of fomenting disorder. "If no one beats us," he said, "there will be no threat from us." Moreover, he is counting on the papal presence in June to raise the morale of the dispirited population.

The church has tried to stay out of the fray. Celebrating an open-air Mass for 20,000 people who had gathered to mark the arrival in Warsaw of the Black Madonna, Poland's most revered religious painting, Roman Catholic Primate Josef Cardinal Glemp told the hushed crowd, "This will be a decisive year for Poland, a year that will define the direction of her development." Glemp carefully avoided any reference to the May 1 protest. But later in the day, before another Mass in the port city of Gdansk, the Polish Cardinal spent about half an hour talking with Walesa. Both men favor negotiations between the government and Solidarity. In their view, the papal visit looms as a major opportunity to prepare the way for a new dialogue. The Catholic hierarchy thus opposes anything that could threaten that hope.

At times last week, the government seemed to be a bigger threat to itself than Solidarity did. In one clear public relations mistake, the authorities mounted a crude display of force against an unofficial ceremony to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. A crowd of 1,000, including scores of foreign guests invited by the government, approached the plaque designating the place from which 300,000 Polish Jews were transported from Warsaw to Nazi death camps. After flowers were laid at the memorial, armed militiamen ordered the gathering to leave on the ground that "it is not an official occasion." They arrested Solidarity Spokesman Janusz Onyszkiewicz, who had pointedly told the crowd that "if the heroes of the ghetto lived today, we firmly believe they would join us in our fight for freedom, truth and human dignity."

The government was just as insensitive at the official ceremony two days later. Some 650 Jewish delegates from abroad were outraged when the Palestine Liberation Organization's representative, Foudad Yaseen, laid a wreath of flowers and said, "We have laid a wreath in homage to Jewish victims of Nazism. Palestinians are the victims of a new Nazism." Asked who were the new Nazis, Yaseen replied, "The Zionists and the Israeli government." In protest, four Israeli officials withdrew from the ceremony. Said one: "We have been deceived by the Polish government."

As the May 1 deadline approaches, so-called military operational groups will be going across the country, as they did just before the martial law crackdown. Ostensibly, their mission is to inquire about living conditions and investigate complaints. They will also be there to remind Poles who is in charge. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.