Forced Hands

In the Silesian city of Zielona Gora--which was Germany's Gruenberg until Poland took it over after World War II--a truckload of town laborers pulled up one morning last week before a onetime German Evangelical Church, used since the Polish takeover as a Catholic parish house. As the workmen set about tossing out furniture to convert it to a community center, beshawled women clutching their rosary beads gathered and shouted imprecations. Soon husbands and sons came up, and a crowd of 5,000 was marching on the police headquarters. When somebody began to throw stones at the grim-faced Communist cops, the police opened up with tear gas and rubber truncheons, injuring 70 rioters and arresting 100.

For both Polish Communist Boss Wladyslaw Gomulka and Catholic Primate Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, the Zielona Gora outburst--the second spontaneous flare-up of church-state conflict in five weeks (TIME, May9)--was a grave embarrassment. Each is aware that ultimately Christ or the Commissar must back down in Poland, but each also dreads anything that might spark a nationwide uprising and thereby provoke the Soviets to give Warsaw the Budapest treatment. But in troubled Poland, the hands of both leaders are increasingly being forced.

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