VATICAN II AND POLAND 191Written by Wrocław’s apostolic administrator, Archbishop
Bolesław Kominek, the letter was intended as an olive branch.
At the same time, the Polish prelates had certain hopes and ex-
pectations—namely, that the bishops of the Federal Republic of
Germany would lobby the Holy See to give Poles jurisdiction over
the dioceses of the “western territories” absorbed by Poland af-
ter World War II.206 Though the Poles had consulted the German
bishops in advance in Rome, the official response sent by the lat-
ter was a disappointment. Irrespective of how one assesses the
German bishops’ letter, there had clearly been a breakdown in
communication between the two episcopates. The German bish-
ops did not give the Poles what the latter had expected, which
was gratitude, forgiveness, and support for Polish claims of sov-
ereignty demarcated by the postwar border on the Oder and
Neisse rivers.207
What surprised the Polish bishops even more, however, was
the aggressive reaction of the PZPR. The Communist general sec-
retary, Władysław Gomułka—who did not know about the Polish
bishops’ letter until weeks later—spearheaded a campaign of anti-
ecclesiastical propaganda intended to punish the episcopate. More
than once, he publicly accused Wyszyński of having gone against
Polish raison d’État by meddling in the delicate matter of sover-
eignty over the “Recovered Territories.” An ugly exchange of let-
ters followed between the general secretary and the primate at the
turn of 1965 and 1966. Decrying the official propaganda campaign
against the Church—“Of what have I not been accused?” the pri-
mate despaired—Wyszyński explained that the bishops and Com-
- Basil Kerski and Robert Żurek, “Orędzie biskupów polskich i odpowiedź nie-
mieckiego episkopatu z 1965 roku: Geneza, kontekst historyczny oraz oddziaływanie,”
in Basil Kerski, Tomasz Kycia, and Robert Żurek, “Przebaczamy i prosimy o przebacze-
nie”: Orędzie biskupów polskich i odpowiedź niemieckiego episkopatu z 1965 roku: Geneza—
kontekst—spuścizna (Olsztyn: Borussia, 2006), 20–25. - “German Bishops’ Reply to Their Polish Colleagues,” December 5, 1965, in
German-Polish Dialogue, 21–25.