Prochy Świętych – Dust of the Saints: A Journey to Warsaw in Time of Hybrid War

Dust of the Saints:
A Journey to Warsaw in Time of Hybrid War

Welcome, Mark.
Let’s get over the welcoming formalities first.

Your impending US Ambassadorship to Warsaw is as phony as a three-dollar bill.

You knew or, as the gentlemen of the legal profession are fond of saying, should have reasonably known, that you are a dual citizen. Whether you knew it or not, liked it or not, rebelled against it or not, and had disclosed it or not in background investigations leading to the issue of your security clearance, you remain a Polish citizen until the day you formally renounce your citizenship in a renunciation process prescribed by Polish legislation, and the President of Poland formally agrees to your renunciation, in writing. All successive Polish citizenship laws from 1962 to this day are at one on that. Look it up.

It gets better. You are liable under the current Polish citizenship law to be regarded a solely Polish citizen while in Poland. On Polish territory, your American citizenship has no legal force. The Polish citizenship law most emphatically states so. Your diplomatic immunity would not withstand a challenge in the Polish Constitutional Court. So, drive carefully.

Why is this so, we hear you asking.
Elementary, dear Mark.

You may or may not be aware of it, but for a smile of Hillary Clinton and a handshake of Joe Biden, you seem to have ground into dust and scattered to four winds the rather formidable lives of your ancestors.

You are a grandson of patriotic anti-Communists, patriots of Poland and Czechoslovakia.

Your father, Zbigniew Kazimierz ‘Zbig’ Brzezinski, was born in Warsaw on 28 March 1928, of Polish citizen parents, Tadeusz Brzeziński (1896-1990) and Leonia Brzezińska (1896-1985) née Roman. Your paternal grandfather, Tadeusz Brzeziński was a decorated soldier of the Polish-Soviet 1920 war. He fought in the historic Battle of Warsaw in August 1920, when Poland stopped the Soviet invasion of Europe.

Later, your grandfather joined his country’s Diplomatic Service and served with honor as a Polish diplomat in Germany, France, Soviet Ukraine and Canada.

He was appointed Polish Consul-General in Montreal, Canada, in 1938. His wife and his son Zbigniew, your father, then aged 10, accompanied him to his overseas posting. Tadeusz faithfully served the Republic of Poland in his post in Canada, from November 1938 until the post-war Communist takeover of the country.

Your father Zbigniew arrived in the United States from Canada in September 1950, and entered Harvard. On 11 June 1955 he married Emilie Anna Beneš, a grand niece of Edvard Beneš, the last president of free, pre-Communist Czechoslovakia.

Emilie’s father, your maternal grandfather, Bohuš Antonin Beneš (1901-1977) was, just like your paternal grandfather Tadeusz, a diplomat of his country. He was Consul-General of Czechoslovakia in San Francisco. He resigned his position upon Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948. On 7 September 1948 Bohuš stated to the assembled American press that he had resigned as Czech Consul because he "was not, and could not be, a Communist”.

With distinguished ancestors like these, what exactly are you doing coming to Poland as an Ambassador of American woke politics, with a mission to punish and subdue Poland for the country's stubborn allegiance to our own culture, tradition and religion? You will do it too, notwithstanding the blood of soldiers and treasure of threadbare budgets that Poland spent fighting together with our gallant American ally in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Your Polish friends are mostly members of the aptly self-named ‘total opposition’. They are the self-hating, ultra-liberal, anti-family, pro-Brussels and anti-national sovereignty side of Polish politics, rejected by Polish voters in the last two national parliamentary elections, and the last presidential election. Out of office and out of ideas, they are impatiently awaiting your arrival and your help in undermining your host Government.

An interesting diplomatic challenge, isn’t it? In return, you may get a drink at a mansion in Chobielin and a good write-up in the Washington Post.

You are not a particularly principled person, Mark, are you? You went along with a shameless disinformation exercise your Polish friends conceived to salvage your posting to Poland. Did they tell you the Great Story of The Withdrawn Objection?

When it came to light that as a dual US-Polish citizen you were not eligible to be accredited in Poland, a cover story was hastily stitched together. The story was that, pursuant to a very obscure 1965 treaty between Communist Poland and Communist Czechoslovakia, irrespective of it not being in force at the time of your birth, and not retroactive either, you became not a Polish, but a Czech citizen, by descent from your mother.

 Well, there is some good news in the sorry story of your appointment. You are not Czech. Your mother, Emilie Benes Brzezinski, was naturalized as a United States citizen on February 28, 1955, over ten years before you were born. On your birth date, April 7, 1965, your mother’s birth citizenship of Czechoslovakia had already been well and truly null and void for over a decade. From 1929 to 1997, Czechoslovak citizens automatically lost their home country citizenship upon naturalization in the United States, pursuant to the Treaty between the United States of America and Czechoslovakia, signed at Prague on July 16, 1928 (Treaty Series No. 804), which remained in force from November 14, 1929 to August 20, 1997.

You are a trained American lawyer, Mark, and you know your onions when it comes to legal research. ‘Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States, 1928, Volume II’ are your friend. Let your fingers do the walking on the keyboard:

  https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1928v02/d688

Your father, ‘Big Zbig’ Brzezinski, a sharp minded political strategist, was naturalized as an American citizen on December 22, 1958. He had never resigned, renounced or otherwise lost his Polish birth citizenship. In Polish law all children of one or both Polish citizen parents automatically acquire Polish citizenship by descent, regardless of their place of birth. (There is one obscure exception, but it does not apply to your circumstances).

So, Mark, like it or lump it, you are a dual citizen of Poland and the United States. Congratulations. Don’t take our word for it. Look up the relevant Polish law.

Anyway, welcome, Mark. When you arrive, remember to say hello to Radek and Anna.