Pastor Who Fled Communism Fears Canadians Are Losing Their Freedom
Artur Pawlowski fled communist Poland in 1990. More than 30 years later, he found video fame for evicting police from his Calgary church on the Easter weekend. The event rounded out Pawlowski’s full-circle journey of faith under oppression, to doubts about a land of freedom, to faith amid oppression again.
Pawlowski first learned what it meant to take a stand when he lived under communist oppression in his native Poland.
“It was about 50,000 communists that were ruling over 36 million Poles,” he recalled in an interview.
“They could come into your house [at] five in the morning, beat you up, torture, even murder. A number of clergymen were murdered,” he said, adding that he “saw the power of solidarity with Lech Wałęsa,” who led the solidarity movement against the communist regime in Poland in the 1980s.