Daily prayers in Advent with Leonard Cohen and USPG: (3) 5 December 2023

‘A million candles burning / For the help that never came’ (Leonard Cohen) … Chief Rabbi Gabriel Negrin places candles in the Holocaust memorial in Etz Hayyim Synagogue in Chania (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in the countdown to Christmas in the Church since Sunday, which was Advent Sunday or the First Sunday of Advent (3 December 2023), the first day in a new Church Year.

Before this day begins, I am taking time early this morning for prayer and reflection.

Throughout Advent this year, my reflections each day include a poem or song by Leonard Cohen. My Advent reflections are following this pattern:

1, A reflection on a poem or song by Leonard Cohen;

2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

Leonard Cohen at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham in 2012 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Songs and Poems of Leonard Cohen: 3, ‘You Want It Darker’:

Leonard Cohen’s poetry and songs were marked by the scars of the Holocaust and reflected with intensity the spirituality of Central European Jewish spirituality. The rhythms of his music and his imagery also drew on the time he spent over many years in Greece.

A month before he died, I had bought his last album, You Want It Darker, which is both deeply spiritual and at the same time gives voice to his expectations of imminent death.

In an interview with the New Yorker magazine to coincide with this album, he declared a determination to keep working at his craft until the end. Yet he seemed to be aware that death was coming. ‘I’ve got some work to do,’ he said. ‘Take care of business. I am ready to die. I hope it’s not too uncomfortable. That’s about it for me.’

Shortly before his first muse, Marianne Ihlen, died, he wrote her a farewell letter telling her: ‘I will follow you very soon.’

The title track of You Want It Darker sounds like the bleak, religious confession of a man facing his own mortality. It is filled with allusions to Jewish liturgy, Christian liturgy and Biblical texts. The backing vocals are provided by the cantor and choir of a synagogue in Leonard Cohen’s home city, Montreal:

If You are the dealer, I’m out of the game
If You are the healer, I’m broken and lame
If Thine is the glory, then mine must be the shame
You want it darker – we kill the flame.
Magnified, sanctified is your holy name
Vilified, crucified in the human frame
A million candles burning for the help that never came
You want it darker – Hineni, Hineni, I’m ready, my Lord.

Here Cohen is quoting the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead (‘magnified, sanctified …’). He addresses God directly as the God who has dealt Cohen out of the game, and who has ignored the ‘million candles’ lit in vain hopes of salvation or redemption.

It is dark, but those who reach into the dark depths that are met on the most intense journeys in spirituality know that this too is accepting the majesty of God and the inevitability of death.

The Hebrew word Hineni which Leonard Cohen repeats in this song literally means: ‘Here I am.’ When it is uttered by Abraham and repeated by other Biblical figures, it is an assertion of moral responsibility: Here I am. I am not running away. Here I stand.

The word Hineni is also the title of the Cantor’s Prayer on Yom Kippur, in which the cantor confesses to being unworthy to represent the congregation and stand before the Almighty. It is almost as if Cohen is making a similar confession. I may be a poet, a hero, and a star, but You know as well as I do that I am unworthy of all that. I am here before You – ready for You to take me.

The song is enriched by extensive Jewish collaboration. The track features background vocals from Gideon Zelermyer, cantor of the Shaar Hashomayim synagogue in Montreal, along with the Shaar Hashomayim choir.

The Shaar Hashomayim cantor and choir also contribute to another song on the album, ‘It Seemed the Better Way.’

This was an 82-year-old poet at the end of a long and deeply spiritual life. It is not surprising, therefore, that this song echoes the language and rhythm of the Kaddish, the prayer for mourners that reaffirms faith in God.

Glorified and sanctified be God’s great name throughout the world
which He has created according to His will.
May He establish His kingdom in your lifetime and during your days,
and within the life of the entire House of Israel, speedily and soon;
and say, Amen.

May His great name be blessed forever and to all eternity.
Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honoured,
adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He,
beyond all the blessings and hymns, praises and consolations that
are ever spoken in the world; and say, Amen.

May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life, for us
and for all Israel; and say, Amen.

He who creates peace in His celestial heights,
may He create peace for us and for all Israel;
and say, Amen.

Leonard Cohen, You Want It Darker:

If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game
If you are the healer, it means I’m broken and lame
If thine is the glory, then mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flame

Magnified, sanctified
Be the holy name
Vilified, crucified
In the human frame
A million candles burning
For the help that never came
You want it darker

Hineni, hineni
I’m ready, my Lord

There’s a lover in the story
But the story’s still the same
There’s a lullaby for suffering
And a paradox to blame
But it’s written in the scriptures
And it’s not some idol claim
You want it darker
We kill the flame

They’re lining up to prisoners
And the guards are taking aim
I struggle with some demons
They were middle class and tame
I didn’t know I had permission
To murder and to maim
You want it darker

Hineni, hineni
I’m ready, my Lord

Magnified, sanctified
Be the holy name
Vilified, crucified
In the human frame
A million candles burning
For the love that never came
You want it darker
We kill the flame

If you are the dealer, let me out of the game
If you are the healer, I’m broken and lame
If thine is the glory, mine must be the shame
You want it darker

Hineni, hineni
Hineni, hineni
I’m ready, my Lord.

‘They’re lining up to prisoners / And the guards are taking aim’ (Leonard Cohen) … Jewish people being moved from the Warsaw Ghetto by German soldiers on 19 April 1943

Luke 10: 21-24 (NRSVA):

21 At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 22 All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’

23 Then turning to the disciples, Jesus said to them privately, ‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! 24 For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.’

‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see!’ (Luke 10: 23) (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 5 December 2023):

The theme this week in the new edition of ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘The Hope of Advent.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (5 December 2023) invites us to pray in these words:

We offer up in prayer all the situations we have experienced or witnessed throughout the year to you Lord. Shine your light of hope into our lives.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
give us grace to cast away the works of darkness
and to put on the armour of light,
now in the time of this mortal life,
in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility;
that on the last day,
when he shall come again in his glorious majesty
to judge the living and the dead,
we may rise to the life immortal;
through him who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

O Lord our God,
make us watchful and keep us faithful
as we await the coming of your Son our Lord;
that, when he shall appear,
he may not find us sleeping in sin
but active in his service
and joyful in his praise;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Almighty God,
as your kingdom dawns,
turn us from the darkness of sin
to the light of holiness,
that we may be ready to meet you
in our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow



‘You want it Darker’ … Leonard Cohen

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Songs to remember the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Since childhood, I have been haunted by the image of the terrified young boy in the Warsaw Ghetto

Patrick Comerford

Since my early childhood, I have been haunted by the photograph of the terrified young boy with his hands raised in the Warsaw Ghetto. He was one of half a million Jews packed into the Warsaw ghetto, transformed by the Nazis into a walled compound of starvation and death.

During the past week, many people on social media have been marking this week’s anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which began 78 years ago on 19 April 1943, the first night of Passover that year. It was the single greatest act of Jewish armed resistance during the Holocaust. They fought the Nazis from inside the ghetto for almost a month before being defeated.

In July 1942, the Germans began deporting 5,000 people a day from Warsaw to the concentration camps. As news of exterminations seeped back, the ghetto residents formed a resistance group.

‘We saw ourselves as a Jewish underground whose fate was a tragic one,’ wrote its young leader Mordecai Anielewicz. ‘For our hour had come without any sign of hope or rescue.’ That hour arrived on 19 April 1943, when Nazi troops came to deport the rest of the Jews from the ghetto.

The partisans were poorly armed as they fought back and were eventually defeated by German tanks and flame-throwers. When the uprising ended on 16 May 1943, the 56,000 survivors faced summary execution or deportation to concentration camps and slave-labour camps.

The Warsaw Ghetto was destroyed after the uprising, and the Nazis deported the remaining 50,000 Jews of the ghetto, most of them to the death camp in Treblinka.

Jürgen Stroop, the SS commander in occupied Poland, put together a 75-page victory album of his role in suppressing the ghetto uprising. The photographs in his album include the now well-known photograph of the unnamed boy with his hands raised high.

Franz Konrad, an Austrian-born SS officer in the Warsaw ghetto, confessed to taking some of the photographs before he was executed by hanging in Warsaw on 6 March 1952.

When the Ghetto Uprising was suppressed, Stroop ordered the destruction of Warsaw’s Great Synagogue on 16 May 1943. He gloated as he later recalled: ‘What a marvellous sight it was. A fantastic piece of theatre. My staff and I stood at a distance. I held the electrical device which would detonate all the charges simultaneously … and pressed the button. With a thunderous, deafening bang and a rainbow burst of colours, the fiery explosion soared toward the clouds, an unforgettable tribute to our triumph over the Jews. The Warsaw Ghetto was no more.’

Stroop’s destruction of the Great Synagogue was the last act of destruction in the Warsaw Ghetto. About 7,000 Jews died in Europe’s first urban anti-Nazi revolt, most of them burned alive. Almost all the survivors were sent to Treblinka.

Stroop’s album with this photograph became key evidence at the Nuremburg war crimes trials. Stroop was convicted at Dachau and later in Warsaw. He was hanged near the Warsaw Ghetto on 6 March 1952.

Poland was once Europe’s Jewish heartland; 90 per cent of the 3.3 million pre-war Jews there had been wiped out by 1945. The Great Synagogue was not rebuilt.

The identity of the boy in the photograph has never been confirmed. He continues to remind me of myself at the same age. He has become one of the well-known faces of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust.



For my Friday evening reflections on the week of this anniversary, I am listening to Paul Robeson singing the ‘Song of The Warsaw Ghetto,’ Zog nit keyn mol (זאָג ניט קיין מאָל).

The ‘Partisan Song’ is a Yiddish song and one of the chief anthems of Holocaust survivors, and it is sung in memorial services around the world. The lyrics were written in 1943 by Hirsh Glick, a young Jewish inmate of the Vilna Ghetto who was inspired by news of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The title means ‘Never Say’ and comes from the first line.

This song was adopted by a number of Jewish partisan groups in East Europe, and it became a symbol of resistance to the Nazis persecution of the Jews and the Holocaust:

Never say that you have reached the very end
When leaden skies a bitter future may portend
For sure the hour for which we yearn will yet arrive
And our marching step will thunder ‘We survive!’

For sure the hour for which we yearn will yet arrive
And our marching step will thunder ‘We survive!’

Not lead, but blood inscribed this bitter song we sing
It’s not a caroling of birds upon the wing
But ’twas a people midst the crashing fires of hell
That sang this song and fought courageous till it fell

But ’twas a people midst the crashing fires of hell
That sang this song and fought courageous till it fell



Manus O’Riordan, in one of his many postings on the Warsaw Ghetto anniversary this week, also reminded me of Paul Robeson’s versions of The Kaddish of Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev.

Robeson usually called it ‘The Hassidic Chant of Levi Isaac.’ It is a version of the Kaddish or memorial prayer attributed to the Hasidic master, Levi Yitzchok (1740-1809) of Berditchev. It is also known as the Din Toyre mit Got (‘The Lawsuit with God’).

Levi Yizchok is considered by many as the founder of Hasidism in central Poland. According to tradition, he had composed the song spontaneously on Rosh Hashanah as he contemplated the steadfast faith of Jewish people in the face of their ceaseless suffering.

He is said to have stood in the synagogue before the open Ark where the Torah scrolls are kept and issued his complaint directly to God:

A good day to Thee, Lord of the Universe!
I, Levi Yitzhak, son of Sarah, from Berditchev,
Bring against you a lawsuit on behalf of your People, Israel.
What do you have against your People, Israel?
Why have your so oppressed your People, Israel?

After this questioning of divine justice, Levi Yitzhak proceeded to chant the Kaddish in attestation to God’s sovereignty and supremacy.

His song, of course, is not not be dismissed as some futile act of protest … it also becomes an affirmation of deep and profound faith in the face of adversity.

Shabbat Shalom

The dome in Florence changed city skylines from Rome and Dublin to Berlin and Albania

Brunelleschi’s duomo in Florence … how were the self-supporting Renaissance domes in Italy built without shoring or temporary timber centring? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Until the 20th century, four domes in particular graced the skyline of Dublin: the domes of the Four Courts, Custom House and City Hall, and the Russian-style copper church dome in Rathmines. But domes were difficult to build and needed highly-refined architectural and engineering skills.

The skills needed for constructing domes were brought to Torcello, Venice, Ravenna and other parts of northern Italy by Byzantine craftsmen who were reluctant to share their secrets with other building workers.

But domes eventually became popular as a status symbol for churches with wealthy patrons. In time, the word duomo in Italian became a synonym for cathedral, to the point that many people think Saint Peter’s in Rome, with its dome, is a cathedral.

The dome at Torcello … Byzantine building skills were transferred to Venice and other parts of Italy? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Earlier this summer, in a collaborative study published in Engineering Structures, researchers at Princeton and the University of Bergamo revealed the engineering techniques behind self-supporting masonry domes that are part of the Italian Renaissance.

They analysed how cupolas like Brunelleschi’s duomo in Florence and later self-supporting Renaissance domes were built without shoring or the usual temporary timber centring.

James Gandon’s dome at the Custom House in Dublin was rebuilt after the Irish Civil War (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

* * *

Professor Sigrid Adriaenssens of Princeton collaborated with a graduate student Vittorio Paris and Professor Attilio Pizzigoni of the University of Bergamo. Their study is the first ever to quantitatively prove the physics at work in Italian Renaissance domes and to explain the forces that allow such structures to have been built.

Previously, there were many hypotheses about how forces flowed through such constructions. But no-one really knew how they were built.

Now these researchers have found that the brickwork of the inner domes incorporated a ‘cross-herringbone pattern,’ lines of staggered, vertical bricks that extended diagonally across the curvature of the dome. These lines repeatedly crossed each other, forming diamond shapes, and were filled in with horizontal courses of bricks.

The copper dome in Rathmines … said to have been made in Glasgow for an Orthodox church in St Petersburg before the Russian Revolution (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

For Professor Adriaenssens, the project advances two significant questions. ‘How can mankind construct such a large and beautiful structure without any formwork – mechanically, what’s the innovation?’ she asks. Secondly, ‘What can we learn?’ Is there some ‘forgotten technology that we can use today?’

Their detailed computer analysis accounts for the forces at work down to the individual brick, explaining how equilibrium is leveraged. Their tests verify the mechanics of the structures and make it possible to recreate the techniques for modern construction.

The researchers anticipate their study could increase worker safety, enhance construction speed, reduce building costs and yield environmental benefits. ‘The construction industry is one of the most wasteful ones, so that means if we don’t change anything, there will be a lot more construction waste,’ said Dr Adriaenssens.

‘Overall, this project speaks to an ancient narrative that tells of stones finding their equilibrium in the wonder of reason,’ said Professor Pizzigoni. ‘Nothing is more moving than reading the lightness of the heavens in stone, in absolute and simple form such as that of the Florentine cupola.’

The dome inside an Orthodox church in Crete … domes are a central feature of Byzantine-style churches (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The dome of the New Synagogue in Berlin … symbolic of Jewish confidence in 19th century Germany (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Blue church domes are synonymous with many Greek islands. The dome was adapted by Muslims from Byzantine architecture and became part of the design of mosques throughout the Islamic world.

Inside the dome at the Irish Islamic Centre in Clonskeagh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A new-found confidence in Jewish communities across Europe was expressed in the 19th century in elegant architecture that included striking domes in new synagogues in Berlin, Bratislava, Budapest, Florence and Rome. The most eye-catching dome in recent Dublin architecture is at the Irish Islamic Centre in Clonskeagh. Who knows, in time we may see more domes on the Dublin skyline.

In multi-faith Albania

The archaeological site at Butrint … settled by Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and Venetians, it was abandoned in the late Middle Ages (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Now that I have been semi-cocooned for far too many months, I realise how much I managed to travel last year, to the point that I never got to write about everywhere I visited. Perhaps the most remote and unusual place to visit last year was the once-Greek-speaking part of southern Albania, including the town of Sarande and the archaeological site at Butrint.

I had first visited southern Albania in 2006, when I lectured on Greek history at the Durrell School of Corfu, and it was interesting to see how much has changed in less than a decade and a half.

At the harbour in Sarande … tourism has opened Albania to the outside world (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

We crossed the once heavily-mined, narrow straits (14 km) that separate Corfu from Albania in less than an hour, and in those pre-Covid 19 days the checks were minimal, with the barest of glances at our passports.

Sarande takes its name from the Greek Agioi Saranda, or Forty Saints, recalling the 40 martyrs of Sebaste, a group of Roman soldiers who were martyred in the year 320. Before World War II, the town was known to occupying Italians as Santiquaranta, until Mussolini changed the name to Porto Edda to please his eldest daughter.

During the Cold War, Albania was one of the most closed countries in the world, isolating itself from both east and west. In 1967, Enver Hoxha declared Albania the world’s first atheistic state.

Until the Covid-19 outbreak, Sarande was enjoying a steady growth in tourism, and Albania has become a diverse, multi-faith and pluralist society.

In classical Greek times, Sarande was Onchesmos. Albania’s first synagogue was built in Onchesmos in the fourth or fifth century by the descendants of Jews who arrived on the southern shores of Albania around 70 CE after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Albania’s first synagogue was built in Onchesmos (Sarande) in the fourth or fifth century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

* * *

Today, the four major faith groups in Albania are the Roman Catholics, the Orthodox Church, Sunni Muslims and Bektashis. The Bektashis are little known outside the Balkans, but their importance is greater than their small numbers suggest. They blend elements of Islam, Christianity and even Buddhism in an esoteric, mystical mixture. Today, Bektashis believe they can be a bridge between Christians and Muslims.

The bells and the bell tower of the Orthodox Church of Saint Charalambos in Sarande (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The City Mosque or Xhamia Sarande in the heart of the city is a relatively small building, with a dome and one, tall slender minaret. Its size compared with the much larger and more impressive Orthodox Church of Saint Charalambos, with its large dome and bells, shows clearly that Sarande is a mainly Orthodox city. It is said that when Saint Charalambos was martyred in the year 202, he was 113 years old.

Inside the City Mosque in Sarande (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The church had notices outside in both Albanian and Greek, but many ethnic Greeks have left this part of south Albania – often known to Greeks as Northern Epirus – and moved to Greece.

Almost all Jews in Albania were saved from the Holocaust during World War II. It is a remarkable record that cannot be claimed in any other occupied country in Europe, and it is all the more remarkable in some people’s eyes because Albania is Europe’s only country with a Muslim majority.

Resisting Nazis in Poland

A group of Jewish people are moved from the Warsaw Ghetto by German soldiers on 19 April 1943

One city-break that has been cancelled already this year was a mid-week visit to Warsaw at the end of May. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust and World War II. Since childhood, I have been haunted by the photograph of the unnamed boy with his hands raised high as the Nazis cleared Jews out of Warsaw following the suppression of the Ghetto Uprising.

I have already visited Kraków, and I wanted to see the site of the Warsaw Ghetto and the surviving synagogues. However, this is not the first but the second time in recent years that circumstances have cancelled a planned visit to Warsaw.

Bishop Edward O’Rourke … the Polish count with Irish ancestors who as Bishop of Danzig was a vocal opponent of the Nazis

The Irish diplomat Sean Lester (1888-1959) played an heroic role as the League of Nations High Commissioner in pre-war Free City of Danzig (Gdansk), but for many Irish people the abiding Irish connection with Poland is Casimir Markievicz, the self-styled Polish count who was married to Constance Gore-Booth.

But an oft-forgotten hero in 20th century Poland with an Irish background is Edward O’Rourke (1876-1943), the first Bishop of Danzig and an outspoken opponent of the Nazis.

O’Rourke, who was known in Polish as Edward Aleksander Władysław O’Rourke, was born Eduard Alexander Ladislaus Graf (Count) O’Rourke in Minsk, in present-day Belarus. He was a member of an aristocratic family of Irish ancestry. The O’Rourkes held titles in the Russian Empire and of the Holy Roman Empire, and Tsar Nicholas I legitimised their titles as Irish counts in 1848. However, as there are no Irish counts as such, many genealogists question the origins and legitimacy of the titles.

Edward O’Rourke studied in Riga, Freiburg and Innsbruck. He was ordained priest in Wilno (Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1908, and became Professor of Church History at a seminary in Saint Petersburg and parish priest of a multilingual congregation.

After the February Revolution in Russia, O’Rourke was appointed administrator of the Diocese of Minsk and interim head of the Roman Catholic Church in Russia. With the proposed independence of Latvia, he became Bishop of Riga in 1918, but resigned in the face of calls for an ethnic Latvian bishop.

O’Rourke was then appointed titular Bishop of Canea and Apostolic Delegate for the Baltic States in 1920. Canea or Chania in Crete was once a Venetian diocese, and the title was previously held by the church historian Nicholas Donnelly (1837-1920), an Auxiliary Bishop in Dublin (1883-1920).

The old harbour of Chania … Edward O’Rourke was the titular Bishop of Canea from 1920 to 1922 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Meanwhile, the Free City of Danzig was separated from Germany under the Treaty of Versailles, and its autonomy was recognised in International Law. O’Rourke became the Apostolic Administrator of Danzig in 1922, with the title of Bishop of Pergamon, one of the seven churches named in the Book of Revelation.

He visited Co Leitrim in 1920s to research his Irish ancestry and later published a history of the O’Rourke family. When the Diocese of Danzig was formed in 1925, outside the hierarchies of Poland and Germany, O’Rourke became the first bishop.

* * *

An international crisis unfolded when the Nazis took over Danzig and tried to absorb the city into Nazi Germany. Sean Lester repeatedly protested to the Germans at the persecution of the city’s Jews and O’Rourke and Lester became personae non grata.

The two found a common affinity in their respect for human rights, their opposition to the Nazis and their Irishness. Lester recalls that on their first meeting the bishop arrived ostentatiously carrying an Irish magazine and patriotically forcing himself to smoke ‘Irish’ cigarettes over his preferred Russian brand.

When the Nazis forced Lester to leave in 1937, O’Rourke became the last independent voice in Danzig until the Nazi-controlled senate forced him to resign and he moved to Poznan in Polanad. In Poland, O’Rourke was appointed titular Bishop of Sophene, a former diocese in Mesopotamia, and became a Polish citizen.

When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, O’Rourke was on his way to Estonia. He travelled through Warsaw and Königsberg (Kaliningrad) to Berlin, and then to Italy. The Nazis refused him a visa to return to Poland and he died in Rome on 27 June 1943. He was reburied in the cathedral in Gdansk in 1972. Today, Edward O’Rourke is regarded as one of the heroes of Polish resistance to the Nazis.

A statue of Constance Markievicz in St Stephen’s Green, Dublin … her husband was a self-styled Polish count (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This feature was first published in July 2020 in the Church Review (Diocese of Dublin and Glendalough)

From the domes of Florence to Greek-speaking Albania and the ghetto in Warsaw

Part of a three-page feature in the July 2020 edition of the ‘Church Review’

Patrick Comerford

My monthly column in the Church Review, the diocesan magazine in Dublin and Glendalough, is an excursion through the architecture of Florence and its influence on domes throughout Europe, Albania and the multi-faith mixture found in a country that was once the only officially atheist state in Europe, and Poland, with its many Irish connections, including an archbishop who resisted the Nazis and foresaw the horrors of the Holocaust.

Once again, the editor of the Church Review, the Revd Nigel Waugh, has given my feature a three-page colour spread, with photographs from a variety of locations from Florence, Venice and Berlin to Sarande, Warsaw and Dublin.

There is a thread that goes through these stories, weaving an intriguing tapestry. If the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown has frustrated your plans to travel in Europe in recent months, this is an opportunity to have a ‘virtual tour’ of a variety of interesting places.

But more about that on this blog tomorrow afternoon HERE.

The colourful Polish painter who wanted to be a count in Ireland

Constance Markievicz … her husband claimed he was a Polish count (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I should be in Warsaw today [27 May 2020] on the second full day or a three or four-day city break. But for the second time in just over two years, I have been forced to abandon plans to visit the Polish capital.

The package to Warsaw, with Ryanair flights and Airbnb accommodation, was a Christmas present, and I was due to fly out on Monday and return tomorrow. But the travel restrictions introduced in response to the Covid-19 pandemic have cancelled all these arrangements.

So, despite having read the guidebooks and planned the sites I was going to visit – including the former Warsaw ghetto, the synagogues and the museums – I am still in Askeaton, Co Limerick. And I am still wondering about Ireland’s most famous Polish ‘in-law’: Casimir Dunin Markievicz, the husband of the suffragist and revolutionary Constance Gore-Booth.

Casimir Joseph Dunin Markievicz (1874-1932), who styled himself Count Markievicz, was a playwright, painter and theatre director. He died in Warsaw on 2 December 1932. But was he really Polish? And, was he ever a count?

The Markievicz family held land in Malopolska Province, now in Ukraine. Casimir was born on 15 March 1874 and grew up on the family farm near the small town of Zywotow. He went to the secondary school or state gymnasium in the Black Sea port of Kherson, where a quarter of the population was Yiddish-speaking Jews, and a quarter to one-third of emigrants with the name Markievicz from these parts of Poland and Ukraine were Jewish.

Casimir Markievicz studied law at the University of Kyiv (Kiev), before moving in 1895 to Paris, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts. There he met and married Jadwiga Splawa-Neyman, and they were the parents of two sons, Stanislas and Ryszard. But the marriage did not last, and Jadwiga returned to Ukraine, where she and Ryszard died in 1899.

That year, Casimir met Constance Gore-Booth in Paris, where the two mixed in student society and Bohemian circles. Constance was born in London in 1868, the eldest child of Sir Henry Gore-Booth (1843-1900) of Lissadell House, Co Sligo, and his wife, the former Georgina Hill. She wanted to study art and persuaded her parents to send her to the Slade School of Art in London in 1893. From there she moved to Paris, where she and the recently-widowed Casimir Dunin Markievicz met at a student ball in 1899.

Eight months after her father’s death, the couple married in Saint Marylebone Church, London, on 29 September 1900 – he was 26 and she was 30; he gave his name as Casimir Joseph Dunin de Markiewicz, and described himself and his father as Polish nobles, but while he dressed in formal court uniform he did not use the title count. The wedding was conducted by the Revd Frederick Sheridan Le Fanu.

Her brother, Sir Josslyn Gore-Booth (1869-1944), asked the British ambassador in Russia, Sir Charles Scott, to look into background of his future brother-in-law, the soi-disant count. The ambassador reported back that Casimir had taken the title of count ‘without right’ and that ‘Poland never had a count of that name.’ The police report wondered whether the Markievicz family, who were landowners, had bought the title at the Vatican or in the Habsburg empire.

Their daughter Maeve was born the following year, when the father’s name at the baptism is given as Cassimir de Markie. But Constance had a strained relationship with her daughter, and when the couple returned to Paris in 1902, their daughter was left in the care of her grandmother, Lady Gore-Booth, at Lissadell House.

When they returned to Ireland, the couple lived at a house on Leinster Road, Rathmines, bought by Lady Gore-Booth, and they were part of the literary circle in Dublin that included WB Yeats, Lady Gregory and the Abbey Theatre. According to his biographer Patrick Quigley, in The Polish Irishman: The Life and Times of Count Casimir Markievicz, the high point of Casimir’s career as a public painter in Ireland came in 1905 when he was commissioned to paint the investiture of the Earl of Mayo as a Knight of the Order Saint Patrick, a major work that captured 68 members of the Irish aristocracy at the ceremony.

He formed his own theatre company, the Independent Dramatic Company, in 1910, which staged plays written by Casimir and starring Constance. But the marriage did not last long. Markievicz left Dublin in 1913, perhaps unenamoured with his wife’s fast-developing political radicalisation, and returned to live in what is present-day Ukraine. A year later, he was one of the many Poles living in the Russian Empire who joined the Tsar’s army at the outbreak of World War I. He never returned to live in Ireland, although he continued to write to his wife in Dublin.

Constance Markievicz was elected to the House of Commons in 1918 and to the Dail for Fianna Fail in 1926. Meanwhile, Casimir Markievicz had moved to Warsaw, where he continued to write and paint. When she was taken to hospital in 1927, he rushed from Warsaw to be by her bedside, painting her picture on her deathbed.

Casimir survived Constance by five years, but he lived with constant ill health and financial difficulties. He lived out his last years in Warsaw, sending freelance contributions to London magazines and newspapers, writing a screenplay for a Polish film that had limited success, and painting portraits and landscapes.

Some of his paintings are in Dublin, some are in the National Museum in Kraków. He died in Warsaw on 2 December 1932, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Nowe, a small town 80 km south of Gdansk.

Casimir used the style and title of count in Paris and in Dublin. But was he ever a real count? Did Constance pretend he was a Ukrainian count to win approval for her marriage from her widowed mother and her brother who had succeeded to the family title?

Despite her revolutionary politics, she liked to be known as Countess Markievicz or Madame Markievicz. But, historically, there were no men in Polish or Ukrainian history with the title Count Markievicz. Eamon de Valera was discreet enough to refer to this founding member of Fianna Fai, as ‘Madame Markievicz.’ He extended similar courtesies to ‘Madame’ Maud Gonne and to ‘Madame’ Charlotte Despard, neither of whom claimed to be a countess.

Poland was notable throughout its history for not granting titles of nobility. There are no counts, barons or nobles with the name Markievicz in the standard lists of Polish counts of the Holy Roman Empire, Polish nobility, Prussian and Austrian nobility in Poland and Ukraine, Russian noble families or Russian nobility of Polish descent, nor did Casimir ever apply for a licence or permission to use the title in Ireland, Britain or France.

The closest he ever got to being a count is through his descent from the Dunin or Duninowie family, also known as Łabędzie. But this was a Polish knightly family of możnowładcy or magnates in mediaeval Poland. One line of descent, the Dunin-Borkowski family, were recognised as counts in Austrian Poland, but this was not the Markiewicz family.

Donal Nevin, in his biography James Connolly, a full life (2005) concludes:

In fact he was not a Count. At least his son, Stanislas, emphatically denied that his father was a Count. Before he left Ireland moved to London, later to America, in the 1930s Stanislas left a sealed letter with John McCann which was not to be opened until after his death. Stanislas died in San Diego in October 1971. The sealed letter read: ‘Dear John, My father was not a Count – Yours – Stasco.’

The colourful Polish count who swept Constance Gore-Booth off her feet at a ball in Paris may have been a romantic rather than a fraud. He was never a count and is virtually forgotten as an artist.

Strolling around the grounds of Lissadell House, Constance Gore-Booth’s ancestral home in Co Sligo, before Leonard Cohen’s concert in 2010 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A missed opportunity to visit Warsaw’s only pre-war synagogue

Facing the Ark in the Nożyk Synagogue, the only surviving pre-war synagogue in Warsaw (Photograph: Ethan Doyle White / Wikipedia)

Patrick Comerford

I should be in Warsaw today [26 May 2020] on the first full day or a three or four-day city break. But for the second time in just over two years, I have been forced to abandon plans to visit the Polish capital.

The package to Warsaw, with Ryanair flights and Airbnb accommodation, was a Christmas present, and I was due to fly out yesterday and return on Thursday. But the travel restrictions introduced as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic have cancelled all these arrangements.

I particularly wanted to visit Warsaw this year and to visit the synagogues of Warsaw and the sites of the Warsaw ghetto uprising on the 75th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust and the end of World War II.

So, I am still in Askeaton, Co Limerick, and this evening I am taking part in the fourth webinar in the Sephardi Academia programme organised by the Bevis Marks Synagogue, with Rabbi Shalom Morris in conversation with Eliezer Papo, who is talking about Sephardim and Ottoman Jewry in the modern state and how they helped to create the world we know today.

The Jewish Community of Warsaw has about 700 members and four synagogues today: the Nożyk Orthodox Synagogue, the Etz Chaim Reform Synagogue, and synagogues of the Chabad community and the reformed community of Beit Warszawa.

The Jewish heritage sites in Warsaw include the synagogue sites, cemeteries, mikvah houses and houses of study, memorials and museums. As the only surviving pre-war synagogue in Warsaw, the Nożyk Synagogue is a reminder of how Jewish Warsaw used to be before the Shoah.

Although Jews had been present in the Mazovia region since 11th century, the oldest document confirming their presence in Warsaw dates from 1414.

A law passed in 1775 encouraged Jews to settle throughout the Mazovian Province, but excluded Warsaw. The early communities near Warsaw developed in Praga from 1780, then still outside the official limits of Warsaw proper.

At the end of the 18th century, Jews gained the right to settle in Warsaw and two communities developed, in Warsaw and in Praga, and the Jewish community established self-government under Prussian rule.

Warsaw’s Jewish population reached its height in the 19th century. When Dov Ber Meisels was appointed the Chief Rabbi of Warsaw in 1856, Jews accounted for more than 26% of the city’s population.

At the beginning of World War I, Warsaw had a Jewish population of 337,000 (38%) in 1914. In the inter-war years this was Europe’s largest Jewish community with 400,000 people – the second largest Jewish population after New York. Before World War II, the Jewish community of Warsaw had over 400 houses of prayer, although most were smaller rooms or houses of prayer attached to schools, hospitals or private homes.

A postcard of the Great Synagogue … once the grandest 19th century building in Poland

The Round Synagogue in Praga was built in 1836, and was the main synagogue in Warsaw until the Great Synagogue was built in 1878. The Great Synagogue of Warsaw was once the grandest 19th century building in Poland. When it opened on 26 September 1878 at the celebration of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, it was the largest synagogue in the world

It was built in 1875-1878 at Tłomackie Street and was designed by the Polish architect Leandro Marconi (1834-1919).

Marconi’s father, Enrico Marconi, was a famous architect who moved to Warsaw in 1822, his mother Małgorzata (Margaret) Heiton was of Scottish descent, while his cousin Leonard Marconi was a sculptor.

Marconi began trained as an architect with his father. They worked together on the Hotel Europejski (1856-1859) and a parish church in Wilanów (1857-1860). His first major project was a villa for the entrepreneur Wilhelm Ellis Rau (1868).

His other works included a villa for his father, dubbed the ‘palace under the artichoke,’ the head office of the Bank Handlowy (1873), a house for Stanisław Zamoyski, a villa for the Sobański family (1877), a renaissance revival palace for Konstanty Zamoyski on Foksal Street, a house for the Branicki family in the Frascati Gardens and numerous palaces and churches outside Warsaw. For many years, he supervised the reconstruction of the Wilanów Palace, the summer residence of the Polish kings.

Inside the Great Synagogue … blown up by the Nazis on 16 May 1943 in the last act of destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto

The Great Synagogue, his best-known work, was commissioned in 1877. Some sources also say he also designed the Nożyk Synagogue, although this is not certain. He died on 8 October 1919 in Montreux.

Although the Great Synagogue was not part of any movement for reform, sermons were delivered in Polish and not in Yiddish, there was an all-male choir and an organ, although the organ was only played at weddings, and the liturgy continued in the Orthodox tradition.

The Great Synagogue was blown up by Jürgen Stroop, the SS commander in Poland, on 16 May 1943, in the last act of destruction of the ghetto in Warsaw by the Nazis. It was never rebuilt, and since the 1980s the site has been occupied by a large skyscraper, once known as the Golden Skyscraper and now known as the Blue Skyscraper.

The remains of the Round Synagogue, dating from 1836, were demolished in 1960, and today the Nożyk Synagogue is the only surviving pre-war synagogue in Warsaw. In addition, there is the Progressive Jewish Etz Chaim synagogue on Aleje Jerozolimskie, and the Chabad community and the Reformed community of Beit Warszawa have their own synagogues.

The Nożyk Synagogue, built in 1898-1902 … the last surviving pre-war synagogue in Warsaw (Photograph: Wilipedia / PKO)

The Nożyk Synagogue on Twarda Street was founded by Zelman Nożyk, a Warsaw merchant, and his wife Ryfka, who donated the site in 1893. It was built in 1898-1902 and was designed by Karol Kozłowski, a Warsaw architect who also designed the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra Hall. However, some sources say it was designed by Leandro Marconi, who also designed the Grand Synagogue.

When it was built, the Nożyk Synagogue was surrounded by high-rise tenement buildings. The synagogue was officially opened on this day 118 years ago, 26 May 1902. The founders donated it to the Warsaw Jewish Community in 1914 in return for yearly prayers in their memory. The building was refurbished in 1923 by Maurycy Grodzieński, who also designed a semi-circular choir at the east wall.

The synagogue was damaged during an air raid in September 1939. During World War II, the area was part of the Small Ghetto and shared its fate during the Ghetto Uprising and then the annihilation of the Jewish community of Warsaw by the Nazis. After 1941, the Germans used the building as stables and a depot.

The Nożyk Synagogue was partially restored after World War II and was returned to the Warsaw Jewish Community. It was completely rebuilt in 1977-1983 and officially reopened on 18 April 1983. It is still a working synagogue and the only surviving pre-war synagogue in Warsaw. It also houses the offices of the Warsaw Jewish Community and other Jewish organisations.

The Etz Chaim Progressive Community Centre was established in 2010 as part of the Jewish Community of Warsaw. The synagogue is in a building on Jerozolimskie Avenue in the heart of Warsaw, opposite the Palace of Culture and Science. Rabbi Stas Wojciechowicz, an Uzbek-born rabbi who came from Israel, has been the rabbi for years.

Beit Warszawa Synagogue, a liberal Jewish synagogue, opened in 1999. It began in 1995 when Severyn Ashkenazy, the Polish-born American hotelier and philanthropist, gathered a group of friends to explore the possibility of creating a reform synagogue.

Cynthia Ann Culpeper (1962-2005) was the first female rabbi to lead religious services in Poland when she conducted High Holy Day services at Beit Warszawa in 2000.

She had converted to Judaism from Roman Catholicism when she was 21, and was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1995. She was working as a nurse in San Francisco when she accidentally contracted HIV due to a needle stick, and was diagnosed with HIV in 1995. When she became rabbi of Agudath Israel in Montgomery, Alabama, she was the first full-time female rabbi and the first Conservative female rabbi in Alabama.

She was the first pulpit rabbi to announce being diagnosed with AIDS. When she announced her diagnosis in 1996, her congregation rallied around her, insisting she continue to work, and wearing red AIDS awareness ribbons. She moved to Birmingham, Alabama, in 1997 where she could get ‘cutting edge’ treatment. Culpeper spoke about AIDS to Jewish communities throughout America, but she did not want to be known as ‘the AIDS rabbi.’ She died of AIDS on 29 August 2005.

Meanwhile, the Beit Warszawa congregation moved into dedicated premises in Warsaw in 2003.

Today, the Jewish community is served by four rabbis, and Dr Michael Schudrich has been the Chief Rabbi of Poland since 2004.

Inside the Nożyk Synagogue … rebuilt in in 1977-1983 and reopened in 1983 (Photograph: Ethan Doyle White / Wikipedia)

Who was the boy in the Warsaw ghetto with his hands in the air?

A group of Jewish people are moved from the Warsaw Ghetto by German soldiers on 19 April 1943

Patrick Comerford

I should be in Warsaw today [25 May 2020] on a three or four-day city break. But for the second time in just over two years, I have been forced to abandon plans to visit the Polish capital.

The package to Warsaw, with Ryanair flights and Airbnb accommodation, was a Christmas present, and I was due to fly out today and return on Thursday. But the travel restrictions introduced as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic have cancelled all these arrangements, and I now wonder when or whether I am ever going to visit Warsaw.

Two years ago, I had booked a three-day visit to Warsaw in early March 2018. That would have been my second visit to Poland, following a city break in Kraków and Auschwitz at the end of 2016. But the ‘Beast from the East’ and ‘Storm Emma’ made a motorway journey to the airport too risky that year, and Warsaw was transferred to my wish list.

I particularly wanted to visit Warsaw this year and to visit the sites of the Warsaw ghetto uprising on the 75th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust and the end of World War II.

We all have photographs that have stayed with us as haunting memories from our childhood, and my two are an image of Adolf Eichmann behind a Perspex screen during his trial in 1960, and the photograph of the terrified young boy with his hands raised in the Warsaw Ghetto.

He was one of half a million Jews packed into the Warsaw ghetto, transformed by the Nazis into a walled compound of starvation and death.

In July 1942, the Germans began deporting 5,000 people a day from Warsaw to the concentration camps. As news of exterminations seeped back, the ghetto residents formed a resistance group.

‘We saw ourselves as a Jewish underground whose fate was a tragic one,’ wrote its young leader Mordecai Anielewicz. ‘For our hour had come without any sign of hope or rescue.’ That hour arrived on 19 April 1943, when Nazi troops came to deport the rest of the Jews from the ghetto.

The partisans were poorly armed as they fought back but were eventually defeated by German tanks and flame¬throwers. When the uprising ended on 16 May 1943, the 56,000 survivors faced summary execution or deportation to concentration camps and slave-labour camps.

Jürgen Stroop, the SS commander in occupied Poland, put together a 75-page victory album of his role in suppressing the ghetto uprising. The photographs in his album include the now well-known photograph of the unnamed boy with his hands raised high.

Franz Konrad, an Austrian-born SS officer in the Warsaw ghetto, confessed to taking some of the photographs before he was executed by hanging in Warsaw on 6 March 1952.

When the Ghetto Uprising was suppressed, Stroop ordered the destruction of Warsaw’s Great Synagogue on 16 May 1943. He gloated as he later recalled: ‘What a marvellous sight it was. A fantastic piece of theatre. My staff and I stood at a distance. I held the electrical device which would detonate all the charges simultaneously … and pressed the button. With a thunderous, deafening bang and a rainbow burst of colours, the fiery explosion soared toward the clouds, an unforgettable tribute to our triumph over the Jews. The Warsaw Ghetto was no more.’

The Great Synagogue of Warsaw was one of the grandest 19th century buildings in Poland and was once the largest synagogue in the world. It was designed by the architect Leandro Marconi and stood on Tłomackie Street. It opened on 26 September 1878 at the celebration of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

Stroop’s destruction of the Great Synagogue was the last act of destruction in the Warsaw Ghetto. About 7,000 Jews died in Europe’s first urban anti-Nazi revolt, most of them burned alive. Almost all the survivors were sent to Treblinka.

Stroop was decorated with the Iron Cross and then sent from Warsaw to Nazi-occupied Greece in September 1943, before being recalled to Germany.

Stroop’s album with this photograph became key evidence at the Nuremburg war crimes trials. Stroop was convicted at Dachau and later in Warsaw. He was hanged near the Warsaw Ghetto on 6 March 1952.

Poland was once Europe’s Jewish heartland; 90 per cent of the 3.3 million pre-war Jews there had been wiped out by 1945.

The Great Synagogue was not rebuilt in Warsaw after World War II. Since the 1980s, the site has been occupied by a large skyscraper, once known as the Golden Skyscraper and now known as the Blue Skyscraper.

The identity of the boy in the photograph has never been confirmed. But he has become one of the well-known faces of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust.

Are you looking forward to a white Christmas this year?

Snow at Askeaton Friary on the banks of the River Deel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

Are you dreaming of a White Christmas?

With only a week to go to Christmas, I have been busy preparing services and sermons, season liturgical and preaching resources for priest and readers in the Diocese of Limerick and Killaloe, carol services, crib blessings, Christmas dinners, mulled wine and mince pies with parishioners in the Rectory … as well as a funeral, visiting Saint Mary’s Cathedral in Limerick, committee meetings in Limerick and Rathkeale and school visits in Rathkeale and Askeaton.

I was in the Rathkeale No 2 National School twice this week, speaking at the school assembly about the meaning of Christmas, and at the reception this afternoon after the children’s play and carol service.

I was also in Colaiste Mhuire twice in the past week. This is the community secondary school in Askeaton, and I am a member of the Board of Management.

I was asked to present a mounted and framed copy of one of my photographs of Askeaton in the snow to two exchange students who are returning to Spain after spending a term in Ireland.

The photograph shows the Franciscan Friary in Askeaton in the snow. It was taken last year when I was snow-bound in Askeaton and was forced by the bitter weather to cancel a planned visit to Warsaw.

The wording on the back of the photographs reads:

‘The Franciscan Friary of Askeaton lies by the River Deel to the north of the village of Askeaton, Co Limerick. The Friary was founded either in 1389 by Gerald FitzGerald (1335-1398), 3rd Earl of Desmond and Lord Justice of Ireland, or in 1420 by James FitzGerald FitzGerald (c.1380-1462), 7th Earl of Desmond.

‘The extensive remains of the Friary and its surroundings represent an imposing mediaeval architectural landscape that was probably planned intentionally in the early fifteenth century. The Friary’s cloister is intact and an image of St Francis is carved into the cloister arcade to remind the Franciscan friars of their patron saint as they went to and from Divine Office.

‘Askeaton Friary, Winter 2018, Photographed by the Revd Canon Professor Patrick Comerford, Priest-in-Charge of the Rathkeale Group of Parishes and Precentor of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick; member of the Board of Management, Colaiste Mhuire, Askeaton.’

Perhaps these photographs will remind these two teenagers of life in Ireland and what winter weather is like here. Perhaps they will make some of the staff members who were at these presentations wistful for a white Christmas.

Reminders of a white Christmas … with staff and students in Colaiste Mhuire, Askeaton, this week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The Polish revolutionary who is the ancestor of a Greek political dynasty

Zygmunt Mineyko, the Polish aristocrat who was the father-in-law, grandfather and great-grandfather of three Greek Prime Ministers

Patrick Comerford

I should be in Warsaw today on a three-day visit to the Polish capital. This would have been my second visit to Poland, following a city break in Kraków and Auschitz at the end of 2016. But the ‘Beast from the East’ and ‘Storm Emma’ made a motorway journey to the airport too risky yesterday afternoon, and Warsaw has gone onto my wish list.

Despite the considerable number of Poles in Ireland – 122,515 people or over 2.5 per cent of the population, and to a lesser degree in Britain – over 900,000 people or 1 per cent of the population, many of us on these islands remain largely unaware of Polish history or culture.

Despite the interesting Polish presence here, we are more likely to know about Spain, France, Italy and Greece.

How many of us can count famous or historical Polish figures on the fingers of two hands, or even one hand?

The ones who come to mind, for me, include: the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543); the composer Frederick Chopin (1810-1849); the writer Joseph Conrad (1857-1924); Marie Curie (1867-1934), who developed the theory of radioactivity; the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919); the exiled General Władysław Sikorski (1881-1943), who gave his name to a fleet of helicopters; the writer Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991), who was a Nobel laureate; Joseph Rotblat (1908-2005), the physicist, CND activist, disarmament campaigner and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate; Lech Walesa, the leader of Solidarity; and Karol Wojtyla (1920-2005), who became Pope John Paul II.

But who remembers that the broadcaster Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974), the Warner Brothers or the pianist Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982) were Poles too? Or Menachem Begin, David Ben-Gurion and Zbigniew Brzeziński (1928–2017), Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser? And few Irish people probably know about the Baal Shem Tov, the mystical rabbi who is regarded as the founder of Hasidic Judaism.

I was mistaken when I thought the painter Marc Chagall was Polish. But perhaps Irish people might add the Polish playwright and painter Casimir Dunin Markievicz (1874-1932), who styled himself Count Markievicz and was the husband of Constance Markievicz – he moved to Ukraine in 1913, and died in Warsaw in 1932.

Constance Markievicz … her husband claimed he was a Polish count (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

I think, perhaps, that Greek people are more conscious of the links Poland and Greece share than people in Ireland are aware of the two-way links between Poland and Ireland.

One of the best-known Poles in modern Greek history and politics was Zygmunt Mineyko (Ζίγκμουντ Μινέικο), a Polish aristocrat who was the father-in-law, grandfather and great-grandfather of three Greek Prime Ministers.

Zygmunt Mineyko (1840-1925) was born into a prominent aristocratic Polish-Lithuanian, land-owning family. One of his ancestors was a signatory of the Union of Horodło in 1413, and the family owned many estates in what are now Poland and Belarus.

Mineyko enrolled in a Russian military academy in Saint Petersburg in 1858, but he returned home in 1861 to spread anti-Russian agitation among the Polish and Belarusian population. He then escaped to Italy, where he taught at a military school in Genoa established by Garibaldi, but he returned home when an uprising against the Russian Empire began in 1863.

Mineyko was arrested and sentenced to death, but he escaped the death penalty and was sent into exile in Siberia. He escaped on an English ship in 1866 using the alias of Count von Meberthe. In Paris, he met Napoleon III, secured the release of French prisoners in Siberia when the Tsar Alexander II visited France in 1868, and went on to study at the École Militaire in Paris.

With a degree in civil engineering, Mineyko worked briefly in Morocco before moving to the Ottoman Empire, where he worked on building railways, bridges and channels in Bulgaria, Turkey and in Epirus and Thessaly, then Ottoman provinces that were later incorporated into the modern Greek state. During this time, he made a sensational archaeological discovery at the ancient sanctuary of Zeus in Dodona, and established close links with the Greek intelligentsia.

In 1880, Mineyko married Persephone Manaris, the daughter of a renowned Greek mathematician Spyridon Manaris of Ioannina, once the seat of the formidable Ali Pasha (1740-1822). The family moved to Athens when Mineyko was appointed chief engineer in the Greek Ministry of Public Works in 1891. He was also a member of the executive committee for Crete in 1896, and in 1897 he was appointed head of the topographic section of the Greek Army’s general staff.

The Panathenaic Stadium in Athens … Zygmunt Mineyko played a key role in rebuilding the stadium for the 1896 Olympics (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Mineyko took part in the revival of the modern Olympic Games, and was involved in restoring the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, the venue for the first modern Olympics in 1896. During the Games, he reported from the stadium for the Polish newspaper Czas, and for many years he wrote on Greek politics for Polish periodicals in Kraków and Lwow.

Mineyko took part in the Greek-Turkish war in 1897. In 1910, he was granted honorary citizenship by the Greek Parliament. Despite his age, at 72 he took part in the First Balkan War, which began in 1912. His strategic plans were crucial in the decisive Greek victory at the battle of Bizani in 1913, leading to the Greek capture of Ioannina, his wife’s home town, and Epirus.

Politically active, he was a strong supporter of the Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, founder of the Greek Liberal Party, who was the key figure in the unification of Greece in 1913.

A heart attack forced Mineyko’s resignation in 1917. After Poland regained independence in 1918, he helped establish diplomatic relations between Greece and Poland, and convinced Venizelos to support the Polish cause in the international arena.

In 1922, Mineyko visited his homeland which had become a part of the Second Polish Republic. There he was made an honorary colonel and received an honorary doctorate. When his wife Persephone Manaris learned about the rise of a newly-independent Poland, she began to sell her property and planned to move to Kraków. But her dream never saw the light of day: Zygmunt Mineyko died in Athens on 27 December 1925.

Mineyko’s memoirs are held in the Library of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, and his memoirs were published in Polish in Warsaw in 1971.

Zygmunt Mineyko and Persephone Manaris were the parents of two sons and five daughters. One of their daughters, Sophia, married Georgios Papandreou (1888-1968), the Governor of Chios who became the political heir of Venizelos and was Prime Minister of Greece of Greece of three occasions (1944-1945, 1963, 1964-1965). He was ousted from office in the colonels’ coup in 1966 and was held under house arrest. He is often referred to affectionately in Greece as Γερος της Δημοκρατιας (Geros tis Demokratias), ‘the old man of the Republic’ or the ‘grandfather of democracy.’

Their son, Andreas Papandreou (1919-1996), who was born on Chios, was a Harvard-educated economist, socialist politician, and Prime Minister of Greece in 1981-1989 and 1993-1996.

Andreas Papandreou visited General Wojciech Jaruzelski in Poland in 1984. There, it is said, he was told that Balvanishki, his grandfather’s home village in Soviet Belarus, no longer existed. In fact, the name of the village had been changed to Zyalyony Bor during the Khrushchev era.

In a poll conducted by the Greek newspaper Kathimerini in 2007, the first four years of Papandreou’s government were voted the best government Greece has ever had.

Andreas Papandreou’s son and Zygmunt Mineyko’s great-grandson, George Papandreou, who was born in 1952, became the third member of the Papandreou family to become Prime Minister of Greece (2009-2011). His brother is the writer Nick Papandreou, a former economist at the World Bank.

Both Nick Papandreou and I were visiting lecturers at the seminar ‘The Emergence of Modern Greece,’ organised by the Durrell School in Corfu in May 2006. I remember how, on the occasion too, a planned journey was also cancelled, when unusual weather for early summer forced the organisers to call off the ten-minute boat trip to the tiny island of Vidos for the closing dinner.

The Cathedral in Kraków … Zygmunt Mineyko’s wife Persephone planned to move to Kraków and his papers are held in the Library of the Jagiellonian University (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

A walk in the snow in Askeaton and wondering about weekend plans

Snow at Saint Mary’s Church, Askeaton, covers the churchyard this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

It’s like a winter wonderland in Askeaton today.

I was supposed to be in Dublin today, co-chairing an interfaith seminar in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute and present as a representative of the Diocese of Limerick and Killaloe. But that was cancelled on Wednesday morning, due to the ‘red alert’ warnings that predicted a nation-wide shut-down by today.

I might never have got there, anyway, as most public transport has been cancelled since mid-day yesterday.

Even still, I thought the worst of the ‘Beast from the East’ and ‘Storm Emma’ had by-passed this part of West Limerick. But panic set into this area by Thursday morning, and people were buying in bulk before the shops closed in the early afternoon.

Nobody expects the ‘bleak mid-winter’ after the daffodils have begun to bloom. The alerts were for other parts of Ireland, especially Leinster and south Munster. The snow was falling heavily as darkness began to close in last night.

Snow covers the rectory garden and the fields beyond (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

I awoke to see the rectory grounds covered in blanket-upon-blanket of snow this morning. The birds are hopping around all day, as it continues to snow, searching for any morsels of food in the snow.

I worked in the house all morning, preparing work for the week after next, and looking after a few administrative tasks. But by this afternoon I needed to get out, even if only for a few logs for the fire later this evening.

Once out, I had to go for a walk.

Some snow is melting in East Square, Askeaton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Almost every shop in Askeaton is closed, including the SuperValu supermarket, the hardware shop, the pharmacists, the coffee shop and the swimming pool and leisure centre. Even shops that had posted notices in their windows saying they would open by noon today were still closed at 3 p.m.

Only one or two pubs were open. But it’s Lent, and it was too early in the day to call in to see how many people had decided to go out this afternoon. The only real life on the streets was a few children playing snowballs, and another man enjoying taking photographs from the bridge of the castle covered in snow.

I called on a parishioner, checked on the church and the churchyard, and walked as on across the bridge and along the banks of the River Deel far as the Leisure Centre on the bank opposite the ruins of the Franciscan Friary.

Snow at Askeaton Friary on the banks of the River Deel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Back in the Rectory, it seemed wise to consult parishioners in Tarbert about the wisdom of continuing with or cancelling Morning Prayer next Sunday in Saint Brendan’s Church, Kilnaughtin. It is on a steep hill outside the town, looking down on the Shannon Estuary, and parishioners who live further away are unlikely to brave the snow piles and icy roads on Sunday morning.

After a few phone calls it seemed best to call off this one service, but to continue with plans for the Parish Eucharist at 930 on Sunday morning in Saint Mary’s Church, Askeaton.

I have plans to fly out from Shannon Airport on Sunday afternoon for a short city break in Warsaw. I was hoping to see the site of the Warsaw Ghetto and other sites in the Polish capital, and Shannon Airport is due to open for flights again tomorrow.

The poet Michael Harding had an epic return journey to Leitrim from Warsaw this week that brought him through Liverpool and Shannon with Ryanair. But getting from Shannon to Warsaw is becoming increasingly unlikely as we move into the weekend, and there is a growing possibility that those plans are going to be cancelled too.

Snow falls on on the ruins of Askeaton Castle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)