Wanda Półtawska

Wanda Póltawska with a priest who looks sort of familiar. Hmm...

A friend sent me a link to a speech on  "the family" by a very elderly lady named Wanda Półtawska. I didn't know anything about her at all, and I wasn't sure if she was talking about a threat to the family or she was the threat to the family. So I looked her up here on what seems to be a feminist site, and the "critical biography" sternly mentions what the writer disapproves of in this courageous woman, e.g. nationalism and her stance against contraception, while giving her due reverence for being an Important European Woman. (Incidentally, if nationalism is so terrible, why the biannual obsession with the Olympics?)

Like Blessed Natalia Tułasiewicz, Wanda Półtawaska was imprisoned in Ravensbruck prison camp. Unimaginable things happened to her, mentioned in the article, including--I am warning you in advance--medical experiments. The day before I read it I had remarked to my friend the Polish waitress that every single time I read about Poland in the Second World War, I am surprised and horrified by yet another ghastly revelation. (When I am in Warsaw this November, I will be staying near the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising, and she had just advised me to prepare myself before I visited.)

The Culture of Death, most obvious in Nazi prison camps, continues across the world today--in ISIS occupied countries, but also in supposedly-sterile hospitals and laboratories in the West. Ugh. What a truly horrible thought. No wonder we distract ourselves from it as much as we can as often as we can.

If you understand Polish well, you might profit by the Youtube video I was sent. So far I cannot understand most of it, actually.  I think I will need to find a transcript somewhere before I can really appreciate what she says.