Posted on 06/18/2008 12:11:01 PM PDT by Grzegorz 246
WARSAW (Reuters) - A Polish newspaper published excerpts on Tuesday of a new book purporting to prove that former anti-communist leader Lech Walesa once informed for the communist secret police, claims he has repeatedly denied.
The claims are not new but the book by two historians working for the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) -- which supervises files from the communist era -- cites what it says are previously unknown documents linking Walesa to the secret police in the early 1970s.
Walesa, a Nobel Peace Laureate and one-time leader of the Solidarity movement that toppled Polish communism in 1989, has long denied the claims of collaboration.
His office declined to comment on Tuesday on the excerpts, published in the Rzeczpospolita daily, but newspapers say Walesa plans to sue the authors when "Walesa and the Security Service" goes on sale next Monday.
In their book, Slawomir Cenckiewicz and Piotr Gontarczyk also say that, while serving as Poland's first post-communist president in 1990-1995, Walesa removed from the state archive documents they say proved his communist-era collaboration.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
They can’t change who Walesa was or what he did.
He is one of the bravest men of the twentieth century. Saint? No. Patriot? Definitely.
A police state is a weird place, and requires a very unique set of survival skills. Whatever they have in their files about Walesa, it doesn’t change the fact that he was the leader of the movement that brought about their downfall. It doesn’t change the fact that he has more courage and integrity than almost anyone of his generation. They know it, and we know it.
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