On a recent excursion through southwestern Poland, I got a pleasant
surprise during a visit to the 700-year old city of Schweidnitz, Swidnica
since 1945. As I was entering Hotel Piast, the best of the city's few
presentable inns, I discovered at the entrance a plaque with the familiar
Rotary wheel and the inscription "Rotary Club of Swidnica-Walbrzych."
At the club's weekly evening meeting, I promptly presented myself to
the club president to make up for my absence in Jacksonville, Illinois.
Service clubs, such as Rotary, Kiwanis, or Lions, had not been tolerated
under Nazi and Soviet rule, from 1939 to 1990. Since then, however,
new clubs have mushroomed in Rotary District 2220, including 60 in Poland,
35 in the Ukraine, and 3 in Belarus. And, as Americans know so well,
where Rotary clubs open up, Kiwanis and Lions are usually not far behind.
There are now three Kiwanis clubs in the city of Gdansk alone, and visiting
Lions can now sniff out fellow Lions in Poznan and Szeczcin.
In Poznan and Bydgoszcz, Catholic Church officials initially opposed
the founding of Rotary clubs because they confused them with Freemasons,
of whom the Church disapproves. Later, however, Pope John Paul II (formerly
Karol Wojtyla of Wadowice) enlightened his misinformed clergy that Rotary
is neither a secret nor an anti-Catholic organization.
Meetings of service clubs in Poland, as elsewhere in Europe, differ
considerably from the way they operate in the United States. Alcoholic
beverages are served routinely, and meetings usually do not include
prayer, a pledge of national allegiance, or collective singing. Round
table discussions sometimes take the place of the guest speaker. In
Poland, moreover, Rotary clubs do not (yet?) admit women.
On the day I attended Rotary at Swidnica, the new club president was
inaugurated. It was ladies' day, and many Rotarians greeted their friends'
wives with a perfunctory kiss on the outstretched hand, a charming custom
that unfortunately has fallen into disuse in America. One member received
a Paul Harris Award and was cheerfully toasted with champagne.
Since Rotary is still somewhat of a novelty in Poland, regional television
covered the event with its festive atmosphere and animated but long-winded
speeches. As soon as the reporter found out that I was one of those
rare visitors from America, he asked if I would grant him a 15-minute
televised interview about Rotary's purposes and my own involvement with
Rotary over 35 years.
When I was introduced, I described our district and our club, as well
as the fact that Jacksonville is not far from Chicago where Paul Harris
founded Rotary 99 years ago. When asked what brought me to Swidnica,
I explained that I hoped to learn of the progress Poland has made since
the end of Communist rule and that I wanted to revisit the city where
I was born two decades before Poland took possession of the whole region
of Silesia. In the spirit of Rotary, I did not mention the unprecedented,
radical ethnic cleansing that in 1945 deprived millions of German-speaking
inhabitants, all of my clan included, of the land and the culture they
had been building for centuries.
Although the brutal Nazi occupation of Poland and the equally brutal
mass expulsions occurred almost half a century ago and the perpetrators
are almost all dead, German-Polish relations remain fraught with recriminations,
even more so Poland's relations with Russia, the Ukraine, and Belarus.
It is therefore a most fortuitous relief for all concerned that the
newly established Rotary clubs in eastern Europe are increasingly championing
improved international understanding, particularly as Germany's 836
and Austria's 100 Rotary clubs reach out to their Eastern neighbors.