Saturday, January 15, 2005
Henryka Krzywonos-Strycharska
The New York Times has a wonderful article this morning about Henryka Krzywonos-Strycharska, the woman who on August 15, 1980 stopped her streetcar at a crucial intersection in Gdansk, Poland, thereby triggering a general strike and the rise of the first independant trade union in the Soviet Bloc. She is, in a sense, Poland's Rosa Parks, and her story is very moving.
This is why I still read The New York Times, and its reward (for which I am certain that the editors will be grateful) is that I will not fisk any of the several hideous pieces written on its editorial and op-ed pages this morning.
Read the whole thing.
Mrs. Krzywonos-Strycharska (pronounced kreh-VONE-os streh-HAR-ska) is a redoubtable figure who, unlike most of the former democracy movement leaders in Gdansk, has moved on to other things besides politics, finding a different way to practice the vocation she discovered, more or less by accident, after stopping that tram.
In the years since, she survived a severe beating by the secret police that left her unable to have children, and went on to form a family orphanage in Gdansk. And so she still lives in Gdansk, not fighting for her country in the broad sense any more, but more modestly, adopting 12 orphans, nine of whom still live with her and her third husband.
This is why I still read The New York Times, and its reward (for which I am certain that the editors will be grateful) is that I will not fisk any of the several hideous pieces written on its editorial and op-ed pages this morning.
Read the whole thing.
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