On the recordApril 14, 2010
In listening to your comments, what continues as a theme throughout all of this is the unbreakable spirit of freedom of the Polish nation; that, despite some of the most harsh treatment from other countries, some of the most difficult challenges ever faced, their strength, their courage, their determination changed the face of the world. I'm sure my good friend from Ohio remembers that day when a new Pope was chosen many years ago, and out on to the balcony came Pope John Paul II. And I remember the announcer saying, This Pope is from Poland. And when that happened, the whole world changed. And it wasn't too long after that that a strike at a shipyard in Gdansk again changed the face of the world, and that the courage of those workers and the strength of their belief in freedom and the Pope's keeping an eye on them, so to speak, helped change the entire world again; where you heard so many times that the Iron Curtain could never be broken, that the Soviet Union would never change, that Poland was a smaller nation than the Soviet Union and would never have a chance to see their spirit of democracy bloom and flower. But the determination of the people of that country could not be denied, and their example led to the Berlin Wall coming down, led to country after country getting their own freedom and their own democracy.
