Word: warsaw
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...legacy of Jews as victims, as passive enablers of their own destruction. Thus his attraction for a film about the three elder Bielski brothers, who forged a community of refugee Jews in the Belorussian woods and fought off the soldiers hunting them down. They helped other Jews escape the Warsaw ghetto. The Bielskis' heroism saved about as many Jewish lives as the hero of Schindler's List did. And they were family, not a wealthy Gentile whose act of paternalist benevolence can be stretched to absolve a generation of "good Germans." The Bielski tale showed that not all Jews were...
...Still, the rest of Europe will be watching closely. "Older member states want to see if a former Warsaw Pact country can be counted on for this responsibility," says Andrew Duff, a British Liberal Democrat member of the European Parliament. "If the Czechs screw up, it would strengthen the French-led arguments for a directory of big member states to take over the management...
Twenty-seven years ago this month, Poland's capital was a different place: instead of showcasing new boutiques and McDonald's, the streets of Warsaw were guarded by tanks and lined with small bonfires to warm the hands of military patrols. On Dec. 13, 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland's Prime Minister, imposed martial law, initiating a brutal 19-month crackdown on the pro-democracy Solidarity trade-union movement in which an estimated 90 people were killed and 10,000 detained. Now, in a case long postponed by political squeamishness and red tape, Jaruzelski and six other former top officials...
...same. Speaker of the Senate Bogdan Borusewicz calls the takeover a "classic Latin-style military putsch" and says the trial may be Poland's last chance for justice. "Jaruzelski defended the communist system, not Poland," Borusewicz says. "He defended the communist dictatorship, not the state." Marek Krasko, a Warsaw accountant, remembers that as a 13-year-old, he welcomed martial law--because the schools were closed--until he saw his grandmother in tears at the prospect of civil war. "Martial law was a hard blow for Solidarity, and it pushed the country back," he says. "But on the other hand...
Younger Poles tend to be more critical than adults who witnessed the events. "Opinions of those who remember the crackdown have changed over time," says Barbara Szacka, a sociology professor at Warsaw's Academy of Social Psychology. The generational split is visible at the trial. A dozen mostly elderly men go regularly to the courthouse, a monumental prewar edifice in downtown Warsaw, to show support for Jaruzelski, while young activists picket outside with banners reading WHEN WILL WE SEE JUSTICE...