Short Report on a visit to Poland in April 2007
by David de Verny, Migrant Workers' Chaplain

The Chaplain visited the capital of Poland, Warsaw, the rural town of Pulawy and the city of Lublin in the Eastern part of Poland over a six day period in April 2007. 

The rationale behind the visit is the fact that most foreign workers in South East Lincolnshire are now from Poland. After previous visits to Posnan and Kracow in the South and West of Poland, Warsaw and the Eastern parts of Poland seemed a logical choice for this visit.

The Chaplain would like to express his sincerest thanks to Dr Anna Kukula and Mr Mikolaj Sawczenko for their support in organising this visit, the help with translating and interpreting and their unstinting kindness and hospitality. Apart from visiting the Old Town of Warsaw which has been entirely reconstructed after its complete destruction during WWII, the Chaplain paid tribute to the estimated 300 000 Polish Jews who were taken from the Ghetto in Warsaw by the Nazis and murdered. A visit to the memorial of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 was also included in the tour.

During talks with officials it emerged that the current government does not seem to be too concerned about criminal agencies in Poland which defraud workers by promising them jobs and accommodation in the UK in exchange for large amounts of money (often £800 and more). Ministry contacts stressed that Poland was a free country and everybody was able to make his or her own choices.  The government also seems to be very keen to claim that the reduction of overall unemployment in Poland from 15% to 10% is due to its own prudent policies rather than to the exodus of its unemployed citizens to other EU countries. Unemployment in Eastern Poland remains at 35-40%. The ministerial contacts were not prepared to comment on the difficulties Polish construction firms are said to begin to experience already because of a shortage of qualified builders, joiners, electricians and brick-layers. Nobody wanted to comment on the visit to London earlier this year by the mayor of Wroclaw who asked Polish workers to return to Poland to work in new factories currently being build there. The mayor’s plea will go unanswered while the wage differences between the UK and Poland remain as large as they are.

In rural Pulawy the Chaplain spoke at length to researchers and workers at a large agricultural institute. Lublin is an ancient town near the Polish border with the Ukraine. 40 000 Jews and Poles were murdered there during the Nazi occupation and a further 30 000 during the first years of the Communist regime after 1945. Lublin is also the home of a famous Catholic university whose most famous professor was the late Pope John Paul II. While the university was still on vacation during the Chaplain’s visit, he had the opportunity to speak to a number of students and priests. Unanimously, they blamed the EU and “the West” in general for anything that might be seen as “going wrong” with Poland: an increase in abortions, teenage pregnancies, drug abuse, prostitution and a general liberalisation of sexual mores. During Sunday services which the Chaplain attended, all preachers spoke about this in their sermons. The Catholic church in Poland also seems to blame the beginning decline of church attendance on the negative influence of Western liberalism and relativism.

This visit to Poland gave the Chaplain further valuable insights into the whole area of migration: socio-economic conditions, faith-related issues and political dimensions.

David de Verny