Tina Rosenberg

On the contrary, his loyalty was such that in 1966 heattended the funeral of his mother, a lifelong Catholic, only afterchecking with the defense minister first.

After the Red Army the Polish military wouldbe the most important invasion force, with 50,000 troops.

The newspaper of the Polish army, Soldier of Freedom, requiredreading for every soldier every day, was indistinguishable fromPravda.

He now held the portfolios of Com-mander in Chief, General of the Army, Chairman of the NationalDefense Council, Minister of Defense, Prime Minister, and FirstSecretary of the Party.

The regular television newscasters

suddenly appeared in military uniforms.

"What a relief to be interned by men in Polish helmets ratherthan Russian ones," joked Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the Catholic in-tellectual.

"Himmler got the order from Hitler but did notcarry it out. He turned many prisoners, especially women in Ra-vensbriick, over to the Swedish. He saved many people. Do wenow call Himmler a just man?"

The Committee on Constitutional Responsibility seemed to betaking an excruciating and at times absurd route to the correctverdict. Jaruzelski's defense of lesser evil had been seen in courtbefore—at the Nuremberg Tribunals. Hitler's acting justice minis-ter, Franz Schlegelberger, had led several other Third Reich judi-ciary officials in arguing that they had stayed at their posts toprevent worse men from taking their place.

During martial law, an inmate of Bialoleka prison calling himselfAndrzej Zagozda wrote: "Here no one can detain you 'for explana-tions,' here you have nothing to fear. It is paradoxical, I know, butif in the morning you are woken up by someone banging on thedoor, you are not afraid of uniformed guests: you know it is onlyyour kindly jailer bringing you your morning coffee. Here you feelno fear when you see an informer with restless eyes: here the spy isharmless. Bialoleka is a moral luxury and an oasis of freedom."

the first legal case in one of the nearly six hundreddeaths at the intra-German border.