Europe News

Poles say goodbye to Solidarity icon

Jul 21, 2008, 12:39 GMT

Warsaw - Polish politicians and international envoys bid farewell on Monday to former foreign minister Bronislaw Geremek, a Holocaust survivor and leading dissident under communism who died last week in a car accident at age 76. Former Solidarity leader Lech Walesa paid tribute at Geremek's funeral in Warsaw, saying the anti-communist movement's victories would not have been possible without him. He recalled their first meeting on the Baltic docks where the labour union was founded. 'I thank God I met you, sir,' Walesa said during the funeral service in the capital's old town. 'I could admire and learn.' Geremek - a pipe-smoking professor with a graying beard - protested alongside shipyard workers in 1980s Poland and worked closely with Walesa in toppling communism. He was post-communist Poland's foreign minister in 1997-2000 and had been a member of the European Parliament since 2004. European Parliament president Hans-Gert Poettering attended the funeral, as did Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and President Lech Kaczynski. The United States sent Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried. Born into a Jewish family in Warsaw on March 6, 1932, Geremek escaped the Warsaw Ghetto at age 11 and stayed in hiding until the end of World War II. His father died at the Nazis' Auschwitz death camp.

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Poles say goodbye to Solidarity icon

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