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Before leaving Warsaw, John Paul paid unannounced visits to monuments commemorating his homeland's tragic ordeal in World War II. Accompanied only by Glemp, Franciszek Cardinal Macharski of Cracow and Vatican Secretary of State Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, the Pope visited the grim confines of Pawiak Prison, an infamous Nazi death house that has been preserved as a monument to thousands of Poles who were tortured and executed there. In a small square in front of the prison entrance, he knelt in silent prayer before a mulberry tree bearing dozens of painted metal plaques with the names of Pawiak victims.
John Paul also visited the site of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. The Pope stooped to lay a bouquet of red carnations at the base of the tall black granite and marble monument and paused to study the heroic figures in bas relief, representing the 69,000 Jews who held out against Nazi forces for three weeks. News of the Pope's unexpected arrival spread quickly. Poles rushed to the windows of drab prefabricated apartment blocks overlooking the monument and congregated in a park laid out after the war on the rubble of the ghetto.
The Pope traveled next to the monastery of Niepokalanow, 30 miles west of Warsaw, to pay tribute to Poland's newest saint: Father Maximilian Kolbe. While a prisoner in Auschwitz in 1941, Kolbe volunteered to die in the place of another Polish inmate who had a wife and children. He was canonized by John Paul in a solemn pontifical ceremony last October in the Vatican.
Despite drizzly skies, a crowd of almost half a million Poles waited patiently in an open field near the Franciscan monastery that Kolbe had founded. Most of them were peasants who had traveled from nearby farms, sometimes in horse-drawn carts, for a glimpse of John Paul. One banner held above the crowd bore the insignia of Rural Solidarity, the independent farmers' union that was organized in May 1981 and dissolved in October 1982. But there were also more traditional symbols of Polish patriotism, including an ensign emblazoned with a golden Polish eagle wearing a royal crown and brandishing a cross. The crowd roared enthusiastically when it caught sight of the white-and-blue helicopter carrying the Pope from Warsaw. He returned that feeling, joining with them as they sang a hymn.
During a Mass in memory of Kolbe, John Paul spoke of the plight of Poland's private farmers. He praised church-related agricultural groups that had once served as the nucleus of Rural Solidarity for striving "to restore to your work in the fields its own special dignity." Then John Paul counseled the crowd "to overcome evil with good." Said he: "It is the program of the gospel, a program that is difficult but possible, a program that cannot be dispensed with."
The Pope's next stop was Czestochowa, the spiritual highlight of his trip. But the thought of the Black Madonna's "tear-filled and sad" eyes said John Paul moved him to reflect again on Poland's recent troubled history. While a crowd of a million people listened from the open fields and woods below the Jasna Gora shrine, the Pope described the creation of Solidarity in August 1980 as a