Original subtitles

Thousands of Poles walk with determination

under a hot August sun.

Their destination, Saint Stanislaus Kostka Church.

Blocking every street and alley are

the tanks, water cannon, and lead filled batons

of the militia.

They have been ordered to stop these people

with force, if necessary.

They have come to here a 35-year-old priest named

Father Jerzy Popieluszko, a chaplain for the trade union

solidarity, a linchpin of the opposition underground

and a peaceful voice of truth and justice for his people.

In three years, this extraordinary priest

mobilized a nation to make their dreams of freedom a reality.

His monthly masses, celebrations of dignity and peace,

spoke of the injustice and tyranny

of the communist system.

There we were free, safe, and not afraid of anything.

The government, they knew they were not able to stop

people from coming to the mass.

At this point, it wasn't impossible.

To the communist regime that has ruled Eastern

Europe with an iron fist since the end of World War II

and to the secret police hiding among the crowd,

he is the most dangerous man in Poland.

All the way from Moscow, through Warsaw, to east

Bahrain, the entire communist system

was afraid of Father Jerzy Popieluszko.

And his only weapon was the truth.

On November 9th, 1989,

east and west Germans gathered at the Berlin Wall

with sledgehammers and pickaxes and began tearing it down.

These iconic images, broadcast worldwide,

proclaim the reunification of Germany

and signaled the end of communism.

But the end of communism in Poland

began years earlier in an otherwise unremarkable

church in Warsaw with the words of Father Jerzy Popieluszko.

At the Yalta Conference in 1945,

Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt

handed Poland over to General Secretary Joseph Stalin

believing his promise to operate Poland

on a broader democratic basis.

Poland has always been a pawn of the world,

whether it's Russia or Western Europe, United States.

It's always been a tradable entity.

Here Stalin, we'll give you Poland

and you give us two players to be named later.

Under Stalin the communist controlled

everything in Eastern Europe.

The media was run by the state.

Wages and food prices were manipulated

and dissension was quickly and brutally

crushed by the secret police.

It is actually the essence

of the communist regime because it wants

to control all aspects of person's life,

including your thoughts, your ideas.

And if you think about it, you rely on the state

for everything in your life.

But from the start, Poland resisted.

With its population of 38 million people, 95% Catholic,

the church and its leadership were

uniquely responsible for the preservation

of Poland's national identity.

The head of the Catholic Church in Poland

was the primate, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski.

He was beloved by the people, a constant thorn in the side

of the communist establishment, and a wily tactician who

was able to maintain and grow the church's influence

for more than three decades.

Cardinal Wyszynski knew communism very well.

He was probably one of the only Polish people

with Marx's book read cover to cover.

For 40 years, the communist regime

used all available firepower to enforce their will.

Nuns and priests were routinely tried and executed.

And the Polish people were ground into submission.

Then in 1979, everything changed.

It's June 2 and Victory Square in Warsaw, Poland is full.

A million people have come to see

Poland's newest hero, Cardinal Karol

Wojtyla, now Pope John Paul II.

Somewhere in this massive crowd is a 32-year-old priest

named Father Jerzy Popieluszko.

And I remember standing there.

And I remember these words, let the spirit come

and renew the face of this earth.

Absolutely clear message.

I am there.

I will support you.

But you have to do it yourself.

That was a clear message.

And I remember the effect that it had on the crowd.

That was like a thunderbolt.

The church hierarchy,

such as primate Wyszynski and the bishops,

the cardinal Wojtyla never agreed with Marxism,

with communism.

They preached freedom of man, freedom, man's

right to freedom.

And that's how one can explain this connection

between the people, the factory workers, and intelligentsia

and the church.

When the Pope came in June of 1979,

we found out again we were Poles.

And that made the communist authorities disappear.

If only for a week, it was the first week

without communists since 1945.

without communists since 1945.

After months of fruitless negotiations,

17,000 workers at the Lenin shipyards

in the northern Baltic Port of Gdansk

went on an occupation strike, locking the gates

and shutting down the entire operation.

The strike committee chose a charismatic former shipyard

electrician as their leader.

The communists were following a simple rule,

do not allow the protesters to organize.

And we couldn't build solidarity because we were

being constantly dismantled.

And then, we got help from heaven.

A poll was chosen as pope.

Without the pope we wouldn't be able to organize

ourselves for a long time.

We wouldn't be able to fight communism.

We were protesting so that people

would be treated seriously.

They were getting fired and thrown out of work.

And that's what the strikes were for, to say, no, enough.

You can't fire people because they go to church

and believe in a free Poland.

Young priests, like Father Popieluszko,

took the Pope's words as a personal challenge.

He used the words of the Holy Father

in his new position as the chaplain

to nursing and medical students, helping

them to form strike committees based on the principles

of nonviolence.

During the 1980s, Roger Boyes was stationed

in Warsaw for the Times.

He reported on the birth of the first free trade union

in the Soviet bloc called Solidarity and its leader

Lech Walesa.

And this combination of legitimate

worker grievances, a theology of freedom and a champion in Rome

that changed the chemistry that in previous post-war uprisings,

in 1956, in 1968, 1970--

The role of Catholicism wasn't really that important.

We didn't have a Polish Pope.

It had changed, something fundamental had changed.

10,000 employees of the massive steel mill

in Warsaw shut down the machinery

and locked themselves inside the gates.

The first Sunday of the strike, three workers

snuck out of the mill and went to see

Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski with an unusual request.

They asked for a priest to enter the striking mill and say mass.

The cardinal saw an opportunity here

he had been waiting for, the gospel

heard inside the hallowed walls of communist power,

the steel mill.

He also knew the perfect man for the task.

A priest who was surprisingly courageous,

who had a deep faith and hope for his people and his country.

And yet he was only 33 years old.

Alfonso Alec Popieluszko was born

September 14th, 1947 in the small farming

community of Okopy.

When he was old enough, Alec would walk two miles

every morning to serve as an altar boy

at Saint Peter's and Paul Church.

At age 17, Alec left the small town life behind and traveled

on his own to Warsaw to present himself

before the rector of Saint John the Baptist Seminary.

In 1965 he was accepted.

And although he was not the brightest student,

he impressed everyone with his friendliness and passion

for his calling.

In 1966, Father Jerzy was a year into his seminary studies

when he was sent with his fellow classmates

to a communist military base for their compulsory two

years in the Army.

The seminarians were placed in a unit separate and unique

from the rest of the cadets, part

of a carefully planned system of atheistic indoctrination.

Bible study and prayer were strictly forbidden.

But unlike some of his brothers, Father Jerzy did pray.

He said the rosary in the open and he refused

to take off his scapular.

That's what Popieluszko

was like when he was ordered to put away his prayer

book, to stop praying, or to put away

his rosary or holy pendant.

I think most seminarians might have followed orders,

but he protested out loud and with a clear message.

He was ordered to stand at attention.

Sometimes all night long.

Sometimes in the rain and snow and often barefoot.

And this was the reason

why, using the military jargon, they put the screws to him.

It was like that until he left.

Father Jerzy's time in the military damaged

his health beyond repair.

But despite spending his last year of seminary

in and out of the hospital.

He was ordained on May 28th, 1972.

Father Jerzy embraced the assignment

from Cardinal Wyszynski.

And on August 31st, 1980, he walked past a gauntlet

of armed riot police, through the gates

of the Warsaw steel mill, and into the hearts

of its striking workers.

The gate opens and he's literally sucked into this,

the steel mill crowd.

The guys bring him inside and then they start to applaud.

And he looks around thinking to himself,

who are they applauding for?

I'm just a priest.

I'm just here to say mass.

A priest had never ever

entered the steel mill grounds.

This was unimaginable.

Once I tried to organize a Catholic group here

for the young workers, but I was ridiculed.

This was a communist fortress that

only served the communists.

That is how the totalitarian regime saw it.

It was clear that something

was happening in the capital.

And it was clear that the regime was really

worried about the transfusion of the Gdansk spirit into Warsaw.

I mean it was already happening, but nevertheless Huta Warszawa

was the kind of communist fortress

that had been penetrated by the Church.

And Popieluszko had done the penetrating.

On that same day in Gdansk,

Lech Walesca signed an agreement legalizing the first free trade

union in a communist country.

It was called Solidarity.

For months, nothing had left the factories of Poland.

With pressure from Russia to get them back

to work and unwilling or unable to resort to violence,

the communist government caved to the striker's demands.

In front of the World Press, the Solidarity Agreement

removed the Communist Party's control

over the industrial enterprise, increased the minimum wage,

and abolished censorship throughout the country.

The main thing was to keep

the communist monopoly over the working class basically.

The whole point of the Communist Party

was it was the voice of the working class.

If you let anyone compete, voice workers problems,

you were in trouble.

So the idea was pretend a bit, let them feel that they were

getting something, give them a few concessions, which

maybe were justifiable anyway.

And then later you scratch it all back.

Was this going to be the first crack in the Iron Curtain?

It could have been. We didn't know it.

Turns out, yes, it absolutely was.

Poland was trying to break free.

And 1980 was such an attempt.

It was successful in the sense that 10 million

people joined Solidarity.

But if you think about it, families, wives, children,

you need to multiply that by two or three.

This no longer means 10 million members, but 20 or 30 million.

So pretty much all the Poles, the whole nation.

Suddenly newspapers could write what they want.

The censorship disappeared.

And that was amazing.

You would see people queuing for newspapers, probably the one

time in history that people actually

stood regularly every day, not just

for bread, but for newspapers.

There were a lot more liberties

around the steel mill.

He started visiting their families.

He started baptizing their children.

He started tending to the sick of the steel workers.

But the people loved it.

They loved the way he spoke to them, the workers,

about their problems, not about the church's problems.

He spoke about their homes, their families,

their work, their money, their lack of money.

It was such euphoria for us.

And it was new, but so obvious to us

that these unions will be formed,

at least after the Solidarity registration.

And it was a big celebration for us.

And we realized we created a new page in our Polish history.

And nothing would ever change it.

And nobody could take it away, absolutely none.

Yeah, it was freedom.

But of course also a time of chronic shortages

and sort of slightly quiet desperation as well.

Sometimes when people write or describe this period

it sounds like it was massive carnival.

And it was in a way.

Our relationship grew.

Father Popieluszko invited Seweryn Jaworski and others

to visit him at Saint Stanislaw Kostka Parish where

he worked as a resident priest.

We paid him a visit.

And then he would visit us at the factory.

He wanted to know what we were doing, what our strike

issues were, and he saw the formation of the union

and our work for Solidarity.

Popieluszko had this special magnetism.

And he was making these linkages.

He was making these linkages between students,

young workers, older workers, country, capital.

He was bringing it all together.

Father Jerzy organized meetings

with journalists, sociologists, professors, historians,

and they taught us how to communicate with authorities,

how to behave with danger.

So that Solidarity members, unified against the government,

could connect and communicate effectively.

You can say thanks to Father Jerzy for this.

People started thinking differently

about their work and study conditions,

which in turn fueled the fight for democracy.

Maybe some of the requests were not fully

understood by the workers.

But the fight for a different reality had begun.

They asked him to design a flag that

would help them show the permanence

of the union at the steel mill.

And he was overjoyed.

I mean first being asked to be their chaplain.

He finally had a family that was his and he was responsible for.

His pastor said, go for it.

What started that morning as a simple procession

of the steel mill Solidarity flag to Father Jerzy's church,

morphed into a massive crowd control nightmare

that the government had not sanctioned.

20,000 people showed up at this little church in Warsaw.

And the police had no idea it was going to happen.

There was no permits.

It completely freaked them out.

They didn't have enough men to ask for IDs.

The church yard was full.

Even the pastor of the Church was a little shocked saying,

can you get more of the people inside the church

so we don't cause a ruckus?

It just didn't work.

The door of freedom had opened a crack.

And now 38 million Poles wanted to barge through it.

With the death of their beloved cardinal,

Stefan Wyszynski, in May of 1981, the new primate,

Cardinal Josef Glemp walked right in to the growing unease

between Solidarity, the Catholic Church,

and the Communist Party.

He joined some of the major Solidarity leaders

in warning the young union that they should

not ask for too much too soon.

To the Kremlin, Solidarity with ideological suicide.

And there was a danger of it spreading like a virus

throughout the Soviet bloc.

They hastily dismissed the civilian government

and installed army general Wojciech Jaruzelski,

putting the army in control.

That was the first sign that the regime

was willing to use force, to use force to preserve communism.

This was the thing.

Because what had happened in all those months, those kind

of absolute helter-skelter months,

the Communist Party had become more and more marginalized,

less and less relevant and was absolutely in chaos,

absolutely in retreat.

I declare that today,

the military council of national salvation has been formed.

In accordance with the Constitution,

the state council has imposed martial law

all over the country.

On December 13th, 1981,

Jaruzelski declared war on the Polish people.

Everything was shut down--

travel, communication, schools, factories, everything.

Suddenly, just shortly after midnight the telexes stopped,

mid-sentence.

And then we really knew something had happened.

If you cut off all communication with the outside world,

you know something's happening.

That night 500,000 soldiers of the Polish People's

Army were mobilized.

They moved in and blockaded every city.

They raided the homes of Solidarity leaders

and dragged them from their beds.

Every Solidarity office throughout the country

was broken into and ransacked.

By the end of the evening, 5,000 people had

been arrested without cause.

In the end, more than 90 people were killed

and hundreds more had been wounded.

In 12 short hours, Jaruzelski's government erased any trace

that Solidarity ever existed.

Martial law was a paralyzing situation.

My younger brother was home on leave from the army.

And I had to tell him to immediately go back to his base

so he would not be court-martialed.

We both were praying not to meet in the days to come.

So my mother was saying goodbye to her two sons.

One was going to Zoliborz, to Father Jerzy,

and the other was going to the military base.

All of a sudden it is no hope at all.

And people start to think, where do you go back, to 1945?

Does it mean that all freedoms are

going to be taken away from us?

How to continue on with living?

Because the first thing that happened,

when martial law was declared, was

that 5,000 people were detained and put into internment camps.

Father Jerzy began hearing the names

of some of those arrested.

His friends from the steel mill and Solidarity--

Karol Sidorsky, Jacek Kuron, Stefan Jaworski,

and Anna Walentynowicz.

Families were left without paychecks

or food coupons and no idea where their loved

ones had been taken.

Within 24 hours Father Jerzy had cleared the basement

of his church, set up a locator map of jails and prisons,

And sent out volunteers to check on the families.

In the ensuing days, some union members

chose to fight back, despite being outnumbered and unarmed.

These were the first few weeks of martial law.

We were keeping track of who was imprisoned, who was jailed,

and who was taken away.

And he said that he would like to have information on what is

happening during these trials.

Who was convicted in what room, what day, and in what case.

I said, OK, no problem because I worked there.

And I moved around easily.

With Solidarity effectively eliminated,

Jaruzelski set his sights on the Catholic Church.

He appointed hardliners to every key position in the government.

An important assignment was General Czeslaw Kiszczak

who was named Minister of Internal Affairs, the office

that controlled the secret police and a clandestine unit

called Department 4, whose sole mandate was to spy

on every church in Poland.

But there were only two that they were really,

really concerned about in 1980.

One was Saint Bridget's in Gdansk because of Lech Walesa

and Father Jankowski, his confessor.

The one that they were even more concerned about

was closer to home base in Warsaw

and that was Saint Stanislaus Kostka Church

and Father Jerzy Popieluszko.

During legal solidarity the church wasn't so important--

or the church as an institution wasn't so important

as a channel of information.

It was only afterwards, after the banning of solidarity,

that it became important.

So where did it happen?

It got displaced into the infrastructure of the church

or sympathetic parishes.

Especially those parishes which were

collecting Western medical aid.

Medical Aid for Poland fund was set up in response

to Lech Walesa's request to the west

to provide medical supplies for Poland

after the imposition of martial law.

You can imagine it was a lot of paperwork.

But we filled up lorries.

We had the paperwork in place.

And we sent these lorries across to Poland.

When Western medical aid started to flow into churches.

Department 4 was then upgraded and expanded

and given massive resources because they were worried.

They were worried that printing machines, all these kind

of things, money, especially money

was flowing in through church channels.

Within weeks of martial law,

leaders of Solidarity that had escaped capture

joined forces with the underground, a network

of writers and intellectuals that

had been printing anti-communist literature for decades.

But the underground was really important.

It was important because it kept the idea alive,

which was an absolute defiance and really

infuriated the regime.

But also the way it wove into the rhythm,

the rhythm of Polish society.

And that's where the church came in.

Because if ever there was a moment for the underground

to show itself or to flex itself it

was exactly at Sunday masses.

Father Jerzy's pastor, Father Teofil Bogucki,

asked him to resume the direction of the next mass

for the fatherland, a monthly celebration

of Polish national unity.

His first mass was on Sunday, February 28.

He was a natural, a little unpolished.

But in his simplicity, he proclaimed

the truth that cut through the lies

of the state controlled media.

He spoke of the men arrested and jailed without cause,

the families left to starve, even

praying for the men in service to the Communist Party.

Almost immediately the secret police appeared

at the door of the Curia, the headquarters

of the church in Poland.

They complained to Cardinal Glemp

about the huge crowds, the seditious sermons,

and the priest.

Cardinal Glemp responded that he saw

no sedition in Popieluszko's words, only the work of God.

The prosecutor's office

had initiated an investigation against me

for abusing the freedom of conscience and belief

while fulfilling religious duties in Warsaw.

Two months into martial law, a friend of mine came from Warsaw

and he said you must read this.

Read the sermons by the very young priest

in one of the Warsaw churches and tell

me what you think about them.

And I read the sermon.

I just could not believe it, because this

was precisely what was needed.

Every last Sunday of the month there is a mass for Poland

and bring crosses with you.

Well, I said, well, it's a strange idea.

I am not going.

Mass passes and people were saying,

Janusz it's not just common mass.

Just go there and see the priest.

His name is Father Jerzy Popieluszko.

He looked like a normal person,

rather tiny, not very outspoken, modest and so on.

But when he started to speak, very simple thing just

gathered in a proper combination to show

that we have to be ourselves.

That no system invalidates our duties, that we have duties.

We have limits, we have duties, and we have to follow

them, as simple as that.

So more and more people gathered then.

From month to month

the masses for the fatherland grew in sophistication

as the crowd grew in number, now spilling outside

of Saint Stanislaus, which was illegal without a city permit.

35-year-old Captain Grzegorz Piotrowski, newly hired

by the secret police, was stunned

by the size of the crowd and the brazen words

of this young priest.

Any anti-state pronouncement was punishable by death.

So he could be killed by military code

at any time for what he said.

When the masses for the homeland

started in February, this place had

become a piece of free Poland.

The crowds would be surrounded by ZOMO and the militia.

It was a truly, truly difficult time.

ZOMO are the special units.

They are not police.

They are special security units, which

are formed from the psychopaths, from the criminals,

from the worst elements society.

And these people are trained to kill, to hurt.

They are people without any morals, any scruples.

I was walking with my wife to the tram, down the tram

going to Praga and suddenly secret police came.

They've got us.

And they said, oh, you are a student, history students.

Oh, how bad.

Who taught you to pray like that with your fingers.

There is no such letter in Polish alphabet.

That's what Jaworski was always telling me.

You will never finish your studies

and you will stay here for longer.

I said, you have no right.

And the guy said, what?

What did you say?

Who are you?

Today, there are steel

hands with fingers that are spread in the form of a letter.

Not even one Polish word begins with that letter.

Because of this letter it won't get better in Poland.

It can only get worse.

Maybe 90% of those people attending the masses they

were Catholics.

But some of them must be like myself.

So agnostic, atheist, what was the reason we're coming?

The reason was quite simple.

There we were free, safe, and not afraid of anything.

And we were fighting for the independent Poland.

And we knew that Father Jerzy Popieluszko is one of us.

And we knew that he loves our country as we love our country.

And that he's not afraid.

Father Jerzy's small apartment

became the center of the growing opposition.

It had become a meeting place for every aspect

of the underground, Solidarity leaders,

famous actors, intellectuals, all fired for their support

of Solidarity.

Each group had some influence on his sermons

and participated in the masses.

But when father Jerzy wanted the common man's touch,

he went to the steelworkers.

Katarzyna Soborak began working at Saint Stanislaus in 1982,

helping distribute aid to families

affected by martial law.

She is now the director of information services at Kostka

and the curator of Father Jerzy's archives.

There was a full church when I went to the mass

in May.

There were many people inside and outside the church.

In the next few months the numbers grew.

There was a park nearby and many people

were in front of the church, on the side streets,

and in the park.

So every month, the number of people attending the mass

for the motherland grew.

From the start, he motivated

the people to stand up with him against the Communist.

Everyone saw him as an ordinary man from humble beginnings.

But his example of faith, conviction, and courage

inspired the people to keep the flame of Solidarity burning.

Every one of his sermons

was tape recorded and either transmitted to the West

by phone or hand delivered to the officers

of Radio Free Europe in Munich.

Now Father Jerzy's voice or Jerzy,

as he was known in the West, was being heard throughout Poland

and all of Eastern Europe.

The government did not accept

the voice of Radio Free Europe.

And the odor from above was that it was not to be

considered the truth in Poland.

It was a threat to the Nation.

This communist system was not equipped for celebrity.

It can't handle celebrity.

That was the problem with Walesa, in many ways.

He'd become a celebrity and dangerous.

And Popieluszko now was now becoming the great celebrity.

And it was done through this conduit,

this Western radio stations rebroadcasting his sermons.

And suddenly he wasn't just reaching 10,000 people.

He was reaching millions.

These radio programs were

deemed illegal by the state.

And simply repeating the content of any Radio

Free Europe broadcast was considered an act of espionage.

I'm living here in Warsaw.

First time that the people are coming

from Silesia, from Gdansk even.

It's very strange.

They've got their own very good priest and the very brave

priest but they are coming to Warsaw

to attend the mass at Stanislaus Kostka Church, very strange.

None of this passed

the notice of the Minister of Internal Affairs.

General Kiszczak was tired of reading

reports about Popieluszko's sermons

and the police budget for the extra men

needed to cover his masses.

Harassment tactics of slashing tires and surveillance

had failed.

It was time to increase the pressure.

The first attack on Father Jerzy's life

happened in December of 1982 when they broke his window

and threw in a brick with a bomb.

Although nothing more than a firecracker tied to a rock,

the message was clear.

Jacek Lipinski from the steel mill

immediately surrounded Father Jerzy and the rectory

with bodyguards.

He asked ex-military fire captain

Waldemar Chrostowski to drive and protect Father Jerzy.

A friend from the fire academy

turned to me eventually to take him under my care.

I am aware that they can intern me,

arrest me, fabricate a scandal.

But I can't stop my activity, which

is a service to the church and to the fatherland.

The tension was building at this one church.

And it was building because the communist government

could not control it.

They called these masses seances of hate.

And they were concerned that Father Jerzy was

building an army, an army of Catholics

to overthrow the government.

But they could not find a reason to disband

this great congregation.

I think at that time

Stanislaus Church was the heart of Poland.

It was the heart of Poland because we knew that priest

is ready to die for us.

Michael Wysocki has

visited this grave every week for the past 27 years.

It is the grave of Grzegorz Przemyk,

the only son of Barbara Sadowska, a boy

he only knew for 20 minutes.

Barbara worked in the Catholic Relief Center

and frequently helped Father Jerzy find medications

banned by martial law.

On May 3rd, 1983, she was attacked at the relief center.

Her hand was broken.

She was warned to stay away from Father Popieluszko.

She refused.

A week later, while celebrating the completion

of his high school exams with friends,

her son was dragged off the street into a police car,

driven to a local police station, and brutally beaten.

At the station one of the boys

was cursing at the officers.

I was told to take care of the quiet boy sitting in a chair.

I looked into the young man's eyes

and they were wide open, glossy, and frightened.

Yes.

I came to the consultation and Greg

was conscious but in critical condition, in shock.

He said that he was beaten at the police

precinct on Jazwyzka Street.

Nevertheless, Doctor Kapinski definitely operated on him.

As the head surgeon, he opened his stomach

and he concluded that everything in his stomach was smashed.

Grzegorz Przemyk died of his injuries

on May 14th, 1983, just two days after the beating.

His funeral, coordinated by Father Popieluszko,

turned into a spontaneous demonstration

against the regime.

Flanked by water cannon, ZOMO, and the militia,

50,000 people marched two miles to Powazki Cemetery in silence.

Father Popieluszko said even pray in silence.

There is a lot of military men all over because they

were thousands of them.

They will provoke you.

And they will even try to stop us.

Let him, let Grzegorz Przemyk can be buried in peace.

I knew his mother.

She was here.

She was sitting just here running away from militia.

And I saw her and I've noticed that she's already dead.

That she's completely broken.

So when Grzegorz Przemyk was killed she was also killed.

After the funeral, Barbara dedicated her life

to the work of Father Jerzy.

She died three years later.

Despite the eyewitness testimony that Grzegorz was beaten

to death at the police station, Michal Wysocki, the volunteer

ambulance driver who carried Grzegorz to the hospital

was falsely convicted of his murder

and served five years in prison.

But the cover up backfired on the government

and attendance at the next mass at St. Stanislaus exploded.

After every Mass for the Fatherland,

Grzegorz Piotrowski filed another report about the circus

at Father Jersey's church.

He reported on the presence of Solidarity

Underground members, activists, famous actors,

and intellectuals.

And even with all of their efforts,

this courageous priest stood on the balcony of his church

and spoke the truth.

And this continued until December 12, 1983,

when father Jerzy was arrested for the first time.

They claimed to have found subversive materials

in his apartment.

At the police station, he was strip searched,

but the officer apologized, embarrassed to have

to do this to a priest.

Only after intercession by Cardinal

Glemp was he released two days later.

Will you be answering any of the questions that are asked?

Father Jerzy went to Cardinal Glemp to thank him,

but Glemp had used a lot of political capital

to get his young parish priest out of jail.

Popieluszko went into this meeting thinking

that he was going to be told, you know, son,

you've done a lot of good.

You have to be careful for your own safety

and-- but keep up the good work.

And instead he got this--

again, I wasn't there-- but tongue lashing.

What are you doing?

You're outgrowing your britches.

You know, learn some respect.

Do what I tell you.

Now get out of here.

I'm sure it wasn't phrased quite that way,

but that's what Popieluszko took with him in his heart,

and it just crushed him.

It's true that the primate could have been upset

because writing a letter to Jaruzelski

in my case cost him a lot.

But the accusations he made against me

knocked me off my feet.

Secret police during the interrogation

showed me more respect.

Captain Piotrowski was

assigned two new lieutenants--

Waldemar Chmielewski and Leszek Pakala.

Colonel Adam Pietruszka warned them

that the next time they arrested Father Jerzy,

it had better stick.

Martial law was destroying Poland's economy,

which owed billions of dollars to the West.

Jaruzelski would get no more financial aid until he started

dismantling martial law.

During the summer of 1984, he called for a general amnesty,

releasing hundreds of Solidarity leaders and tens of thousands

of common criminals.

The leaders of Solidarity Warsaw left prison and went

directly to St. Stanislaus.

A week later, Lech Walesa asked Father

Popieluszko to travel to Gdansk to celebrate the amnesty.

The crowd buried the priest in flowers while Lech

Walesa smiled and watched.

It was a clear sign to the secret police watching

that Father Popieluszko was the true voice of the growing

call for freedom.

It's difficult for young people to understand, yeah.

There was no-- no internet, no satellite

phones, and no Twitter.

There was an event, those masses for the homeland,

10,000 people heard it.

They spread the word.

But thanks to the technology of Western radio stations,

it was fed back then into the country to millions of people.

To millions of people, Popieluszko

was becoming a national figure.

On September 9th, an article

appeared in the Russian newspaper,

"Izvestia," railing against the militant Father Popieluszko,

saying his sermons so reek with hatred for socialism

that they are more like anti-Bolshevik pamphlets

than proper church sermons.

For the first time, the Russians had

mentioned Father Jerzy by name.

This was a clear sign from Moscow

that if Jaruzelski's government couldn't handle this problem,

then they would find someone who could.

And that's when everyone panicked.

Everyone started to panic within government, not Department 4,

not just the Department for Buses,

not just the head of the secret police,

but the whole regime thought, oh my god, our time's run out.

Difficult to collect thoughts,

a mental grinding mill.

On April 11th, I was interrogated for the 11th time.

The secret police said I could get 38 years in prison.

It was draining him, draining him.

He put so much into those masses, he got a lot of advice

about how to do it, and he did it and he it brilliantly.

But at the end of it all, he was completely drained.

He was completely wiped out like a sponge, you know,

that had be squeezed.

And yet people wanted more.

They wanted to touch him.

They wanted to be close to him and so on, and he couldn't-- he

couldn't handle that.

It was really difficult.

In late September, Colonel Adam Pietruszka called

Piotrowski into his office.

He demanded to know how much longer he would allow Father

Jerzy to travel all over Poland freely spreading

his anti-government message.

He said no more games.

Stop planning, stop writing, and do something.

I surely do not have to tell you,

comrade, that this decision comes

from the very highest level.

Pietruszka's efforts to silence Father Jerzy

began as simple harassment--

slashed tires and vandalism then arrests

and prolonged interrogations.

In early October, Father Jerzy boarded a train for Gdansk

followed closely by Piotrowski.

The secret police captain planned

to catch him near a door and throw him

off the speeding train, but Father Jerzy's friends

never let him travel alone.

The train was a test in my opinion.

It was an attempt to kill him.

The next attempt on Popieluszko's life

came on the night of October 13th.

Out of nowhere, Piotrowski stepped out of the darkness

and threw a brick at Father Jerzy's windshield,

but he missed.

It wasn't being hit with the rock.

It was just a test when he threw the rock, but it didn't work.

We drove on past it to the church.

With every failed attempt,

the pressure on Piotrowski to get something done increased.

There were situations when

Walde Chrostowski or I was driving the car

with Father Jerzy and we were being

followed by the secret police.

I would go to Suchowola with Father Jerzy

and during one of the trips, his mother said dramatically,

Jerzy, they can hurt you.

He replied, mother, do not worry.

I have Jacek and 10,000 people behind me.

Nobody would dare.

Later Father Jerzy's situation got worse.

He received many anonymous letters with foul language.

They once wrote him a letter saying that they'd

crucify him and cut his throat.

He read the letters during the mass.

The man from [POLISH] went to the primate without

telling Father Popieluszko.

And they begged him to send him away.

They realized that the pressure was being turned up,

that the danger level for Father Popieluszko was way too high.

At the time, there was an idea sending your Father

Jerzy to study abroad in Rome.

Friends came up with this idea to save

him from the danger he was in.

Father Jerzy knew about the possibility of going to Rome,

and he was really torn in his decision

because on the one hand, I think he needed a break by that time.

He was totally exhausted.

But he had this enormous sense of loyalty, a solidarity

with the people, and just could not accept the thought

that anybody, not even one person,

would feel that he betrayed them and he chose

the easy option that he left them back in Poland

and went to Rome.

The primate asked Father Popieluszko.

He met with him, and he said the men came and talked to me.

They're worried about you.

And father Popieluszko's answer was I'm not going to leave.

I know what's happening.

I know what's going to happen, and it's my duty.

I'm doing my job.

He was aware that his life was in danger.

He knew about it, but that was his character.

It was his deep understanding that he will go down this road.

Father Jerzy had promised

to come celebrate mass with a seminary colleague

in Bydgoszcz.

He was exhausted, had a bad cold,

and the staff at St. Stanislaus wanted him

to cancel and get some sleep.

But Father Jerzy took these commitments very seriously

and promised he would rest on the four-hour drive.

Amen.

On October 19, 1984, Father

Jerzy and his driver, Waldemar Chrostowski, left for Bydgosz.

They was supposed to come back to Warsaw that night.

A car followed them with three members of the secret police--

Grzegorz Piotrowski, Leszek Pekala,

and Waldemar Chmielewski.

He was trained as a paratrooper to roll--

fall properly.

He had the toughness of a fire fighter.

He had-- he's a strong, strong man who can do that.

And he has his wits about him.

There were some people on the side of the road,

and I ran up to them and told them that Father

Jerzy had been kidnapped.

The courier immediately put everybody on alert that Father

Jerzy had been taken.

In eight hours, all the churches

in Poland knew that Father Jerzy had

been taken, started a vigil--

a prayer vigil-- and masses in support of his safe return.

It wasn't that everyone assumed right from the start

that he was kidnapped.

They had suspicions.

It was more a disappearance.

He had disappeared.

I want to say that if even one hair falls

from Father Jerzy's head, someone is

taking a huge responsibility.

We are Christians who think that.

At the time, I thought this couldn't end well.

I thought it couldn't end well because the anger

within the party--

the Communist Party establishment was too strong.

During those nights as the crowds of people

who were standing vigil outside the church continued to grow,

it was completely peaceful.

The [POLISH] were forced to back up further and further

until they disappeared into the crowd that

was surrounding the church.

Today in the waters of the lagoon in Wloclawek,

Father Jerzy was found.

And my dears will repeat the hardest truth,

the hardest particularly for you brothers

of our beloved martyred brother, Father Jerzy.

We'll repeat three times this heroic--

this is heroism and forgive us our sins

as we do those who trespass against us.

Once more and forgive us our sins as we

do those who trespass against us once more.

The reaction of the tens and hundreds of thousands of people

who followed his words and followed his sermons,

they didn't do anything.

They did not set fires.

They did not kill Polish police or attack military bases.

They didn't run into the streets screaming

into guns and automatic weapons that

were being trained on them.

They didn't do that.

They did what Popieluszko told them to do,

which was to keep your dignity, remain silent,

and don't give up.

I was able to see Father Jerzy's body

along with my friend and a brother

from the priesthoods and a Mr. Jacek Lipinski

from the Solidarity movement in Warsaw.

We, along with the mom and dad decided that he

would be buried in Warsaw.

At first, I was going to Bialystok

to identify the body.

I could stomach it because I worked

in a hospital and an ambulance.

No one from our family would have known that it was him.

He was so massacred.

His lips were so beaten, they looked like jelly.

I noticed a birthmark on him, and that's

how I knew he was my brother.

I was like in shock.

We didn't believe it.

Probably most of the people didn't believe it

that's going to happen because everybody

was waiting for Father Jerzy.

Everybody told him he's going to be maybe not healthy,

but he be alive.

So there was a shock for us.

On the 11th day at night during mass,

the horrible news was announced.

When the people cried and yelled,

I had a different reaction.

I just wanted it to be quiet so that something

phenomenal could happen, so that it would be quiet once more.

Father Jerzy's coffin was escorted to the city

limits by hundreds of taxis and private cars

before making the four-hour drive to Warsaw where

thousands more were waiting to welcome

him home for the final time.

On November 3, 1984, over 1 million people

came to his church.

With one voice, They said, "We are here, Father Jerzy,

and we heard you."

Rest in peace, Father Jerzy.

Solidarity is alive because you gave your life for it.

Overriding longstanding church law,

Father Jerzy was buried just outside the doors

of his beloved St. Stanislaus Kostka Church,

just close enough to hear the pleas of his people

and their continuing prayers for freedom.

And they decided to frighten Poles,

to murder, to torture the most popular priest,

and they wanted to say to us you also must shut up.

Otherwise, you will end up like Father Popieluszko

at the bottom of Vistula River.

We will kill you.

And the West will not say a word.

Piotrowski's-- his anger, his sadism,

and his frustration with the system and everything that had

gone wrong with Poland and with his life,

this combination of two things made for one

of the most brutal murders in the political

history of Eastern Europe.

It was a message to Poles.

Keep your mouth shut.

You are here, and what's more at staying here, together

with us, together with Soviet army,

and with your death of your--

his death.

And you're going to be also dead, next day.

Shut up.

But the people would not be silenced.

They took to the streets warning the government that there

would be no more mock trials.

The people would be watching.

From Gdansk to Warsaw, his message grew louder

in the months after his murder.

His sermons flooded the underground.

His voice filled the airwaves louder

and clearer than ever before.

And his Masses for the Fatherland

continued, a monthly reminder of what was lost

and what there was left to fight for.

Their fight continued until the first free democratic elections

in 1989, when Solidarity won the majority of seats

in the government five months before the collapse

of the Berlin Wall.

He sacrificed his life for the truth

and for justice.

And this is why the workers needed him as their role model.

He was a representative

of those healthy forces in the church, voices

that fought against slavery.

His courage, his preaching, cost him his life.

In the end, 28 countries from East Germany

to Russia held open democratic elections, setting 1 billion

people on the path to freedom.

But it all started in Poland.

It all started in Warsaw in a rather unremarkable church

with a young priest that gave his life for his faith,

for his friends, and for his country.

What will I say to him?

Dare say?

Even though you're not here, we have not sold out.

And we can stand proud with our heads up high 30 years

after martial law.

We came to a realization that Jerzy is not ours anymore.

He is not our Jerzy from the steel plant.

The Blessed Father Jerzy Popieluszko,

his example will lead others to holiness

and all of the situation and His Holiness have overwhelmed me.

God wanted us to become close and to experience it together.

And I thank him for it.

He was everything to me.

Alphonse Popieluszko,

from the small town of Okopy, was declared Blessed Father

Jerzy Popieluszko, the last step to sainthood

before an audience of 350,000 Poles and guests

from all over the world.

His life was a gift, his death a tragedy, his legacy a miracle.