On Monday, October 5, vice-chairman Patrick van Schie, in his position as director of the Telders Foundation, was a guest on the radio program “The Hague lobby“. The subject was the relations “on the right” in view of the approaching parliamentary elections. He also explained what classical liberalism is and that “neo-liberalism” does not exist, […]
Book report: Jasper Becker, Why communism failed (London, 2022) ISBN 9781787388062; price € 28.99 By Patrick van Schie Wherever Communism has been tried, everywhere it has led to impoverishment – except for the party elite and the associated leadership of the “security” apparatuses (army and intelligence services) – and often famine, with many […]
Seventy-four years ago at a prison in Kurkowa Street in Gdańsk, the late father Marian Prusak, a parish priest been residing in Gdańsk in those days, gave Last Rites to merely seventeen year old Danuta Siedzikówna aka “Inka”, and the forty two year old Feliks Selmanowicz aka “Zagończyk”, soldiers from Major Zygmunt Szendzielarz “Lupaszka’s” […]
This month it is exactly 75 years ago that the communists finally seized power in Czechoslovakia (at the time, the current Czech Republic and Slovakia formed one country). In all the countries that would disappear behind the Iron Curtain after the Second World War, a similar process took place of the elimination of pro-democratic forces and the establishment of the dictatorship of the communist party. In Czechoslovakia, however, this took longer, which is why many people – both among the democratically minded Czechoslovaks and in the West – harbored the illusion for the longest time that the country would be spared an ‘equalisation’.
Ambassadors of Lithuania, H.E. Mr. Neilas Tankevičius, Latvia H.E. Ms. Aiga Liepiņa and Estonia H.E. Mr. Lauri Kuusing invite to the 3rd edition of online Baltic Film Weekend in the Netherlands which will take place from 27 till 29 January. ”The 2023 edition is devoted to the courage and resolve of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians whose combined […]
Review of Lea Ypi, Free. Coming of Age at the End of History, 978-0241481851, 313 pages. Patrick van Schie Lea Ypi is a curious girl full of questions. That may not be so special, but it is a challenging feature because she grew up in the eighties in Albania, which was then the […]
By Beata Bruggeman-Sękowska It is 1980. Not far from Zavidovo, Soviet Republic. Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev is driving recklessly from his dacha his black Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, a gift from the Queen Elizabeth II and suddenly he is driving under a truck. His limousine gets demolished but he survives the accident. Not the only car […]
By Beata Bruggeman-Sękowska Hill of Crosses situated about 12 km north of the city of Šiauliai, in northern Lithuania is a pilgrimage destination and is extremely impressive. It has been a place of courageous peaceful resistance against the Russian and Soviet oppressors. Crosses are a symbol of faith, hope and freedom. During the Soviet era they were removed […]
August 17, 1962: Peter Fechter killed by GDR border troops By Patrick van Schie Peter Fechter bleeds to death on the wrong side of the Wall The young East Berlin construction worker Peter Fechter became world famous because of his flight to freedom. More than a year after the construction of border barriers […]
Description of Nausicaa Marbe, Waiting for the West (Amsterdam, 2022) ISBN 9789044647280 Patrick van Schie The Iron Curtain fell away more than thirty years ago. What happened behind that Curtain is history for most Western Europeans. It is different for those people in or from Eastern Europe who are old enough to have […]
By Patrick van Schie 65 years ago, an uprising against communist rule took place in Hungary. It was not the first uprising behind the Iron Curtain (in June 1953 an uprising took place in the GDR, in June 1956 in the Polish city of Poznan) but it was the largest. The Hungarian uprising was […]
By Beata Bruggeman-Sekowska When you are in the capital city of Poland Warsaw you definitely cannot miss Marszałkowska Residential District (MDM) and the Constitution Square, which will bring you back in the communist times. When the construction of the Warsaw W-Z route was successfully completed in 1949, the communist authorities intended to create a flagship […]
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