Rome, Italy, Apr 12, 2007 / 09:28 am
The Archbishop of Krakow, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, said this week a new norm requiring Polish citizens to publicly disclose their collaboration with the Communist regime between 1944 and 1990 would only present a partial version of the truth about the past, would “harm many people” and would contribute to the “disintegration” of society.
According to the Italian news agency SIR, the Cardinal said the new norm, which went into force on March 15, is “a painful legacy from the Communist regime” which exposes “the weaknesses of the victims of the system,” who were often unaware of what they were doing. At the same time, he said, the norm exposes the “treachery of the enemies of the nation and of the Church.”
SIR also reported that the norm requires those who collaborated with regime any time up to August 1, 1972, to publicly disclose by May 15th how long they collaborated with the secret police and in what way. The Institute of National Memory is charged with verifying the more than 700,000 declarations expected to be made.
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