Nashville Committee on Foreign Relation Poland Study Trip

June 5 – 13, 2009

(Click here to see George Paine and Doug Brown’s op/ed on U.S.-Polish relations from the July 5 Nashville Tennessean.)

With the assistance of U.S. Ambassador to Poland (and Tennessee native) Victor Ashe, a dozen members of the Nashville Committee journeyed to Poland in early June.
 
The group visited historical and cultural sites in Warsaw and Krakow, and made side trips to the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia (Hitler’s heavily bunkered command headquarters for the Nazi Russia campaign), to Auschwitz-Birkenau outside Krakow, and to Poland’s spiritual center, Czestochowa, site of the Pauline Monastery that houses what the Germans call “The Black Madonna” and the Poles “Our Lady of Czestochowa.”
 
A very full schedule of trip events included, most especially, a dinner party for the group at the U.S. Ambassador’s residence and an hour-long meeting with Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski and his senior staff.
 
The following pictures capture some of the excellence of the trip.  (Photos by Bob Fee, Wallace Hutcherson, Ken Jensen)
 

The restored Royal Palace as seen from Warsaw’s Old Town
 

The Memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. (Click to enlarge.)
 

Old Town, Warsaw, wholly rebuilt since total destruction in WWII. (Click to enlarge.)
 

U.S. Ambassador Victor Ashe speaks to the group over dinner at his residence.
 

Ambassador Ashe, Nashvillians and other dinner guests pose on the residence stairs
 

Warsaw’s Chopin monument, near the group’s hotel. (Click to enlarge.)
 

The Nashville travelers at the monument to the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. (Click to enlarge.)
 

Members of the Nashville Committee and Amb. Victor Ashe arrive at the Polish Foreign Ministry
 

Polish Foreign Minister and ACFR’s BDA Member Radek Sikorski, whose first question to the group was “Am I still a member of the BDA?” To his right is Polish Undersecretary of State Pawel Wojciechowski.
 

Nashville members and Foreign Ministry officials talk across the table.  The meeting with Foreign Minister Sikorski and his senior staff was arranged by ACFR Executive Director Ken Jensen.
 

Doug Brown presents Foreign Minister Sikorski with commemorative editions of Jack Daniels!
 

In turn, Radek Sikorski presents the Nashville group with French champagne bottled expressly for him as Polish Foreign Minister. This was duly drunk by the group with great ceremony in Krakow the next day.



The Wawel Cathedral at Wawel Castle, Krakow (Click to Enlarge)
 

A statue to American Revolutionary hero (and Polish national hero) Tadeusz Kościuszko outside the Wawel Castle. (Click to enlarge.)
 

The gate of Auschwitz I
 

Caption: The guard tower at Auschwitz II (Birkenau). (Click to enlarge.)
 

The Nashville group stands in front of Hitler’s bunker at the Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia


Nashvillian (now living in Krakow) Gina Kuhn talks to the group about contemporary Jewish life in Poland


The Pauline Monastery and Basilica at Czestochowa
 

Our Lady of Czestochowa (the Black Madonna)

The Nashville Group with guide Fr. Simeon at Czestochowa (left to right: Joan Sively, Doug Brown, George Paine, Dennis Caffrey, Bob Fee, Fr. Simeon, Al Abbey, Ken Jensen, Wallace Hutcherson, Tom Kanady, Charlie Cook, Mary Cook, Ophelia Paine, Anne Paine. Not pictured: Jimmy Earle) (click to enlarge)