Mosaic of Jesus and Mary Dedicated to Polish Soldiers Vandalised with ‘BLM’ Graffiti
Mosaic of Jesus and Mary Dedicated to Polish Soldiers Vandalised with ‘BLM’ Graffiti
Follow @KnightsTempOrgThe 1954 mosaic depicting the Virgin as Our Lady of Częstochowa — better known as the Black Madonna — had been defaced with spray-paint and its plinth branded with the letters “BLM” in the city of Breda.
The image of Our Lady, which is revered by Poles and also known as the Black Madonna, was erected in a park in Breda in 1954 in thanksgiving for the city’s liberation from the Nazis in 1944.
The Polish 1st Armored Division, commanded by General Stanisław Maczek, freed the city on October 29, 1944. After the war, 40,000 inhabitants of Breda signed a petition to award Maczek honorary Dutch citizenship. When Maczek died in 1994, he was buried alongside his fallen soldiers at a cemetery in the city.
The National Catholic Register quoted Breda’s mayor, Paul Depla,“ as saying that the vandalisation was “particularly sad for the Polish community, for which the monument is of great value”.
Daniel Kawczynski, the Polish-born Conservative MP and Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Poland said that he was “deeply saddened that the perpetrators of this vandalism clearly don’t understand the powerful meaning to so many Poles of this monument which they have desecrated.”
“So many Polish soldiers died liberating Holland from the evils of Nazi occupation. The Madonna being vandalised adds to the shame for anyone like me who is a Christian, this is deeply hurtful,” he added.
A former chairman of the General Maczek Museum, Frans Ruczynski, was still more forceful, saying the act of desecration was “very insulting”.
“Polish people are very religious. Every Sunday they go to church, with hundreds in Breda,” he said.
“Why would you want to hurt them? We don’t know if it comes from the left or right corner. But when it comes to Black Lives Matter, I don’t understand it. The Black Madonna has nothing to do with oppression at all.”
Shaun King, a prominent Black Lives Matter supporter with over one million followers on Twitter alone, recently called for “All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, his European mother, and their white friends [to] come down,” branding them a “gross form of white supremacy”, “tools of oppression”, and “racist propaganda”.
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