Poland

Garnering support from as far away as Poland, two Main Line friends who launched an Internet-based fund-raising campaign Dec. 31 to enable them to fulfill their plans for a trench coat company committed to manufacturing in the United States surpassed their $15,000 goal Thursday night. In the process, American Trench has sold 15 coats, which are being made in Newark, N.J., and sell for $725, said cofounder Jacob Hurwitz of Wynnewood. An additional 57 people bought socks, which are produced by a knitting mill in Reading.

Now, Poland, there's a union town . . . er, country. So what's the Marriott Corp., that avowedly non-union hotel chain, doing opening the country's first Western-managed hotel? Just paying the workers at the Warsaw Marriott better-than-average wages while feeding them two meals a day - not to mention bringing in desperately needed foreign currency for the Polish government. The company's boost to the local economy also extends to the contracts it has signed with Polish farmers, fishermen and a brewery to ensure a steady stream of local provisions.

In an effort to calm Polish fears of a powerful, reunified Germany, President Bush yesterday told Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki that "Poland must have a voice" in any international decisions "affecting the fate of Poland. " Bush's statement - the broadest commitment the United States has made to a major Polish role in determining the shape of a new Europe - was made in a White House ceremony welcoming Poland's first non-communist prime minister since World War II. Talks later between Bush and Mazowiecki focused on Poland's fears that a reunified Germany might try to claim territory ceded to Poland by Germany after World War II. Moreover, Poland wants a greater role than it has been granted in international discussions about German reunification.

Poland is finding that introducing democracy and capitalism is easier said than done, according to Polish diplomat Zbigniew Kudas, who described Poland as a nation where events are changing faster than attitudes. Although change in Poland has become irreversible, Poles must now become accustomed to the complexities of elections and free enterprise, said Kudas, who addressed a crowd of 100 people at Camden County College last Wednesday. "You also have a transition of minds," said Kudas, first secretary of the Polish Embassy in Washington.

I came back three weeks ago after two years in Poland and was greeted as a returning war veteran. I wondered why until I read a Dec. 14 front-page headline. "A struggle for survival grips Poles" may catch the reader's attention, but it does not capture the atmosphere in Warsaw. In a sense it is equally apt for Philadelphia. I imagine there are mothers here who also cannot afford to buy winter shoes for their children. Sure, Poles have less than Americans. Acquiring simple things like toilet paper is an art and important things like an apartment for some seem next to impossible, but life is not "a struggle for simple existence.

Poland yesterday called the terms of a U.S. offer of emergency milk "arrogant and abusive," and countered with a pledge of 5,000 blankets and sleeping bags for New York's "many thousands of homeless who sleep in the streets. " The U.S. government has offered to send Poland 50,000 tons of powdered milk to replace milk that might have been contaminated because of the Soviet nuclear accident. But yesterday, Jerzy Urban, a spokesman for the Polish government, assailed a May 6 U.S. Senate resolution urging that the milk be distributed through Polish church and charitable groups, rather than by the Communist government, to make sure it was given out without political considerations.

More than a decade of struggle for freedom and democracy will bear fruit in Poland this year. Poland is getting cable television. Yes, it's cable television for a nation in which less than a quarter of the households have telephones but 98 percent have television sets, according to the joint venture that will build the nationwide cable system. Cable television for a country where the only two broadcast channels - both government-owned - each operates about 12 hours a day. And, true to the capitalist system their nation is adopting, Poles will pay a lot for the new service, perhaps as much as $22 a month in a country where the average monthly income per person is less than $200.

WARSAW, Poland - The daughters of a Yiddish writer persecuted under communism reclaimed copies of his works Tuesday after a prolonged legal fight with a Polish archive. The letters, newspaper articles, and poems by Naftali Herts Kon, whose real name was Jakub Serf, were deposited with the Warsaw Archives by communist authorities after he was sentenced to prison on fabricated charges in 1963. After 15 months in confinement, Kon left for Israel, where he died in 1971. On Tuesday, his daughters received the papers - in 15 folders.

The Solidarity trade union movement, suppressed for years with its leaders sometimes imprisoned, now governs Poland after the abdication of the ruling Communist Party yesterday - a voluntary passage of power unthinkable only months ago. Tadeusz Mazowiecki, 62, the editor of Solidarity's weekly magazine and who was interned for a year during martial law in 1980-81, was asked formally last night to fashion a new government by President Wojciech Jaruzelski,...

President Bush this summer will make the first visit to Hungary by a U.S. president and will stop in Poland to show American approval of reforms in Eastern Europe, the White House said yesterday. White House officials said Bush would visit the two countries, which are at the cutting edge of change in Eastern Europe, in mid-July before heading to Paris to attend the annual economic summit of Western industrial powers. Bush might add Yugoslavia to his itinerary, the White House said.

Thatcher foes mark her death LONDON - Hundreds of opponents of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher partied in London's Trafalgar Square to celebrate her death, sipping Champagne and chanting "Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead. " Thatcher's most strident critics had long vowed to gather in central London on the Saturday following her passing. The former leader died Monday at 87. The mood appeared festive and the celebration was peaceful. There was one minor scuffle with police, who said they made nine arrests, most for drunkenness.

A husband and wife from central Pennsylvania filed suit in Bucks County Court on Wednesday, claiming that the woman was abused by a priest from the Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Doylestown, and that the Philadelphia Archdiocese, the shrine, and its priests, the Pauline Fathers, allowed the priest to flee to Poland after she reported the incident. The suit claims the Rev. Marek Lacki befriended the couple - parents of eight children - at a weekend retreat in March 2012, then encouraged the wife to visit the shrine for private counseling.

WARSAW, Poland - A U.S. plan to deploy missile defense interceptors to Poland and Romania has been a source of assurance to Washington's allies, who welcome further integration in a key U.S. security system. Meanwhile, it has infuriated Russia, which sees the interceptors as a threat and has cited them to block cooperation on nuclear arms reductions and other issues. So some might have expected the Russians to be relieved and the Poles to express anxiety at a plan announced last week by U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, which effectively cancels plans to put long-term interceptors in Poland in the next decade.

WARSAW, Poland - The daughters of a Yiddish writer persecuted under communism reclaimed copies of his works Tuesday after a prolonged legal fight with a Polish archive. The letters, newspaper articles, and poems by Naftali Herts Kon, whose real name was Jakub Serf, were deposited with the Warsaw Archives by communist authorities after he was sentenced to prison on fabricated charges in 1963. After 15 months in confinement, Kon left for Israel, where he died in 1971. On Tuesday, his daughters received the papers - in 15 folders.

WHENEVER the Catholic Church grabs her periodic moment in the spotlight, you can be assured to read a story about (a) the sex-abuse scandal, (b) the evils of mandatory celibacy, (c) the refusal to ordain women as priests, (d) homophobia or (e) all of the above. Given the media's track record we shouldn't really be surprised. When ratings are your true god, the real one doesn't stand a chance at fair and balanced coverage. It doesn't even bother me that "Saturday Night Live" in a recent episode did its occasional "we're more sophisticated than you are" attack on the church by portraying Jesus wielding an assault weapon.

Cardinal Jozef Glemp, 83, the head of Poland's influential Roman Catholic Church from 1981 to 2004 - a time when it played a historic role in the fight against communism - died Wednesday, Jan. 23, in Warsaw after a long illness, a church spokesman said. Cardinal Glemp was the primate for most of the papacy of the Polish-born Pope John Paul II, who was elected in 1979. The church then enjoyed huge influence in Poland, with John Paul inspiring the Solidarity movement of Lech Walesa that helped topple communism in 1989.

Garnering support from as far away as Poland, two Main Line friends who launched an Internet-based fund-raising campaign Dec. 31 to enable them to fulfill their plans for a trench coat company committed to manufacturing in the United States surpassed their $15,000 goal Thursday night. In the process, American Trench has sold 15 coats, which are being made in Newark, N.J., and sell for $725, said cofounder Jacob Hurwitz of Wynnewood. An additional 57 people bought socks, which are produced by a knitting mill in Reading.

Underneath the rumbling Market-Frankford El in the heart of Kensington is where heavyweight Steve Cunningham chose to get away. In order to prepare for Saturday's bout with Poland's Tomasz Adamek, Cunningham moved his training camp from West Philadelphia's Shuler Gym to Rock Ministries on Kensington Avenue near Somerset Street. "It's just all for me, and I needed that," Cunningham said. "I needed to get away from the rigmarole. . . . Sometimes, you switch it up to show yourself how serious you are. " The fight, a 12-rounder to be televised live on NBC10 at 4 p.m. from the Sands Casino in Bethlehem, Pa., will be his second since moving up to heavyweight.