By Paul Suski –
By reading and entering more thoroughly into the spirit of new documents and books one must come to the conclusion that the Miracle on the Vistula river has been the most spectacular of all. How fitting here, the biblical verse “ Victory in battle does not depend on who has the largest army; it is the Lord’s power that determines the outcome”. (1 Maccabaeus 3:19).
The regaining of the hard-won independence in 1918 is often explained as the long awaited “resurrection” which soon could have been lost. The risk was imminent. For the Bolsheviks, full of their revolutionary enthusiasm of 1920, the advance to the West was an ideological necessity while bourgeois Poland was a mere bridge to be crossed in order to link communist Russia with Germany on the brink of revolution.
Three and a half Polish infantry divisions fought back eleven Soviet infantry divisions and two cavalry ones. The Red Army Command were absolutely certain that the defeat of the cornered and isolated Warsaw was only the matter of days. This opinion was also shared by the members of the International Military Mission in Poland among whom was the British ambassador to pre-war Poland Lord Viscount Edgar D`Abernon. The Russian commander Mikhail Tukhachevsky had no doubt of a sweeping victory as the Polish army had been retreating in panic for six weeks, covering about ten English miles daily. All in all the fall of Warsaw was almost a fait accompli. Despite that, Nuncio Archbishop Achille Ratti (later Pope Pius XI) made a decision to meet the Antichrist one on one. He appealed for worldwide public prayers for Poland. The ordinary people of Warsaw dropped to their knees in droves. In no way could Churches hold the crowds engrossed in prayer.
Over 100,000 Poles took to the streets to beg for God’s Mercy.
14th of August – At 3:30 in the morning, Bolsheviks started the offensive and easily overran the Polish positions. The murderous fire of their machine guns ruthlessly mowed down fleeing young and inexperienced Polish soldiers. Many of them were students of Warsaw schools who a few days before volunteered to defend their homeland. Seeing chaos and terror in the eyes of the lads, Father Ignacy Skorupka, moved by internal inspiration, led the extended line to meet the wheezing bullets of the enemy. He moved ahead, holding a wooden crucifix, meeting his death, uttering “for God and for homeland” on the outskirts of Ossowo village. Nobody expected that this would be a turning point in the battle at that section of the front line. From this moment on, the Soviets did not retreat but fled panic-stricken.
15th August – The Queen of Poland appeared during a night charge of Lieutenant Stanislaw Pogonowski in the small hours, at two different locations in the proximity of the villages Mostki Wolczanskie and Wolka Radzyminska. Awakened by a sudden fusillade, the Red Army troops were truly terrified. They saw the tremendous figure of a woman wafting above the heads of the attacking Polish battalion. A streak of divine light illuminated her, making her well visible in the darkness. There was a halo round her head. The lapels of her navy-blue-hued coat flying in the wind covered the battle stations of the Poles and the glare of Warsaw. The woman held a sort of a shield, deflecting the Russian bullets which returned and exploded exactly where the Russian reserves were stationed. The local Poles were only able to discern a heavenly glow in the sky.
It was not the first and would not be the last time when the pride of the Church`s enemies was humbled. From a military viewpoint it seems impossible that volunteers who were mostly high school or even primary school students were able to vanquish veterans of the 79th Infantry Brigade under the command of Gieorgij Chachanin. Some sources report that the Soviet’s incessant march to Warsaw was regarded as quite easy. Not until they reached the suburbs did they realize they had completely lost the ability to command and the will to fight.
With regard to the first sighting on the 14th of August according to the memories of Cardinal Alexander Kakowski, “the captured Bolsheviks spoke about the Mother of God, above a priest vested in a surplice and holding a cross”. Testimonies were found of Polish witnesses who met terrified, teeth chattering, bugged-eyed almost insane Red Army soldiers begging to be hidden away from the Tsarina – Mother of God (Matier Bożju). They were subsequently passed on to medics and doctors who worked in the P.O.W. camps. Actually, hundreds of such accounts could have been easily obtained and written down from 26,000 captured soldiers. All available reports say that Our Lady appeared solely to the Red Army troops.
Aware of this the Church`s enemies did their utmost to gloss over the great importance of these apparitions. No wonder it was kept quiet, since the vast majority of mid-war Polish ministers were freemasons, and supporting the communist governments after the Second World War, openly declared religion the ‘opium’ of the masses. The Reds placed a 40-year ban on Jerzy Kossak’s painting which clearly represents a figure of Our Lady soaring above the heads of fighting soldiers.
The conspiracy of silence has been maintained for nearly one hundred years. Even Pope John Paul II urged that the silence be lifted. Unfortunately, his appeal fell on deaf ears. So far only a handful of clergymen and laypeople have dared to speak their mind about that unusual occurrence. One of them was Fr. Dr Jozef Bartnik SJ (†2013).
Withholding the facts and consequently misrepresenting the history of Europe can also be explained through the prism of Gen. 3:15 “I shall put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; it will bruise your head and you will strike its heel”. It is worth noting here again that the Queen of Poland appeared neither to a single person nor to a dozen soldiers but to hundreds of them. Yet, there has been no canonical verification of particular testimonies.
Paul Suski, based in Poland, has BA in English Language Teaching, MA in political science, three adolescent children and wears a Carmelite scapular.