One of the signatories, Lech Wałęsa, in the US Congress
Dear Mr. President,
We watched your conversation with the President of Ukraine,
Volodymyr Zelensky, with horror and disgust. We find your expectations
regarding the demonstration of respect and gratitude for the material aid
provided by the United States to Ukraine—currently fighting Russia—to be
offensive. Gratitude is owed to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who are shedding
their blood in defense of the values of the free world. They have been dying on
the front lines for over 11 years now, in the name of these values and the independence
of their homeland attacked by Putin’s Russia.
We do not understand how the leader of a country that symbolizes the free world
could fail to see this.
We were also horrified by the atmosphere in the Oval Office
during that conversation, which reminded us of the interrogations by the
Security Service and the courtroom trials in communist courts that we vividly
remember. The prosecutors and judges, acting on orders from the all-powerful
communist political police, also used to explain to us that they had all the
cards in their hands, while we had none. They demanded that we cease our
activities, arguing that thousands of innocent people were suffering because of
us. They deprived us of our freedom and civil rights because we refused to
cooperate with the authorities and did not show gratitude to them. We are
shocked that you treated President Volodymyr Zelensky in a similar way.
The history of the 20th century shows that whenever the
United States tried to keep its distance from democratic values and its
European allies, it ultimately resulted in a threat to the United States
itself. President Woodrow Wilson understood this when he decided in 1917 that
the United States would enter World War I. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
understood this when, after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he
decided that the war in defense of America would be fought not only in the Pacific
but also in Europe, in alliance with the countries attacked by the Third Reich.
We remember that without President Ronald Reagan and
American financial involvement, it would not have been possible to bring about
the collapse of the Soviet Union’s empire. President Reagan was aware that in
Soviet Russia and in the countries it had conquered, millions of enslaved
people were suffering, including thousands of political prisoners who paid with
their freedom for their commitment to democratic values. His greatness lay,
among other things, in the fact that he did not hesitate to call the USSR an
“Evil Empire” and waged a decisive struggle against it. We won, and today in
Warsaw, opposite the U.S. embassy, stands a monument to President Ronald
Reagan.
Mr. President, material aid—both military and
financial—cannot be a substitute for the blood shed in the name of Ukraine’s
independence and freedom, and that of Europe and the entire free world. Human
life is priceless; its value cannot be measured in money. Gratitude is owed to
those who bear the sacrifice of blood and freedom. For us, people of
“Solidarity” and former political prisoners of the communist regime serving
Soviet Russia, this is self-evident.
We call upon the United States to fulfill the guarantees it
provided, along with the United Kingdom, in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. In
this document, it was explicitly stated there would be an obligation to defend
Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine relinquishing its
nuclear weapons arsenal. These guarantees are unconditional: there is not a
single word in there about treating such assistance as a matter of commercial
exchange.
Below is a list of 40 signatories, political prisoners from
the time of the Polish People’s Republic (PRL). Apart from the former
Presidents Lech Wałęsa and Bronisław Komorowski, these include Bogdan
Borusewicz, Zbigniew Bujak, Władysław Frasyniuk, Bogdan Lis, Adam Michnik, and
Andrzej Seweryn.
- Lech
Wałęsa, former political prisoner, leader of Solidarity, President of the
Third Republic of Poland
- Bronisław
Komorowski, former political prisoner, President of the Third Republic of
Poland
- Marek
Beylin, former political prisoner, editor of independent publications
- Seweryn
Blumsztajn, former political prisoner, member of the Workers’ Defense
Committee
- Teresa
Bogucka, former political prisoner, democratic opposition and Solidarity
activist
- Grzegorz
Boguta, former political prisoner, democratic opposition activist,
independent publisher
- Marek
Borowik, former political prisoner, independent publisher
- Bogdan
Borusewicz, former political prisoner, leader of the underground
Solidarity in Gdańsk
- Zbigniew
Bujak, former political prisoner, leader of the underground Solidarity in
Warsaw
- Władysław
Frasyniuk, former political prisoner, leader of the underground Solidarity
in Wrocław
- Andrzej
Gincburg, former political prisoner, underground Solidarity activist
- Ryszard
Grabarczyk, former political prisoner, Solidarity activist
- Aleksander
Janiszewski, former political prisoner, Solidarity activist
- Piotr
Kapczyński, former political prisoner, democratic opposition activist
- Marek
Kossakowski, former political prisoner, independent publicist
- Krzysztof
Król, former political prisoner, independence activist
- Jarosław
Kurski, former political prisoner, democratic opposition activist
- Barbara
Labuda, former political prisoner, underground Solidarity activist
- Bogdan
Lis, former political prisoner, leader of the underground Solidarity in
Gdańsk
- Henryk
Majewski, former political prisoner, Solidarity activist
- Adam
Michnik, former political prisoner, democratic opposition activist, editor
of independent publications
- Sławomir
Najnigier, former political prisoner, underground Solidarity activist
- Piotr
Niemczyk, former political prisoner, journalist and printer of underground
publications
- Stefan
Konstanty Niesiołowski, former political prisoner, independence activist
- Edward
Nowak, former political prisoner, underground Solidarity activist
- Wojciech
Onyszkiewicz, former political prisoner, member of the Workers’ Defense
Committee, Solidarity activist
- Antoni
Pawlak, former political prisoner, democratic and underground Solidarity
activist
- Sylwia
Poleska-Peryt, former political prisoner, democratic opposition activist
- Krzysztof
Pusz, former political prisoner, underground Solidarity activist
- Ryszard
Pusz, former political prisoner, underground Solidarity activist
- Jacek
Rakowiecki, former political prisoner, underground Solidarity activist
- Andrzej
Seweryn, former political prisoner, actor, Director of the Polish Theater
in Warsaw
- Witold
Sielewicz, former political prisoner, printer of independent publications
- Henryk
Sikora, former political prisoner, Solidarity activist
- Krzysztof
Siemieński, former political prisoner, journalist and printer of
underground publications
- Grażyna
Staniszewska, former political prisoner, leader of Solidarity in the
Beskid region
- Jerzy
Stępień, former political prisoner, democratic opposition activist
- Joanna
Szczęsna, former political prisoner, editor of the underground Solidarity
press
- Ludwik
Turko, former political prisoner, underground Solidarity activist
- Mateusz
Wierzbicki, former political prisoner, printer and publicist of
independent publications
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