“The blood spilt on the streets of Poznan not only by workers, but also by women, students and children, was not shed in vain. Indeed it was the seed of the freedom whose fruit was the fall of the Stalinist system years later and the full sovereignty of the nation”: that’s the central past of the message of Pope Benedict XVI addressed to the Polish bishops in recent days to mark the 50th anniversary of the worker uprising in Poznan, the first courageous insurrection against the Communist regime in Poland, which then formed part of the Soviet bloc. A mass demonstration took place in Poznan in 1956, when some 10,000 workers took to the streets to protest and ask for “bread and freedom”. The regime used a heavy hand to crush the protest, opening fire on the crowd and killing 58 demonstrators, with hundreds of arrests. In his message the Pope exhorts the Poles “to build society on the eternal Christian values, on truth and lasting justice”. Benedict XVI’s message was read out to the authorities present at the ceremony by Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, metropolitan of Poznan.
