Warsaw - Polish politicians and international envoys bid
farewell on Monday to former foreign minister Bronislaw Geremek, a
Holocaust survivor and leading dissident under communism who died
last week in a car accident at age 76.
Former Solidarity leader Lech Walesa paid tribute at Geremek's
funeral in Warsaw, saying the anti-communist movement's victories
would not have been possible without him. He recalled their first
meeting on the Baltic docks where the labour union was founded.
'I thank God I met you, sir,' Walesa said during the funeral
service in the capital's old town. 'I could admire and learn.'
Geremek - a pipe-smoking professor with a graying beard -
protested alongside shipyard workers in 1980s Poland and worked
closely with Walesa in toppling communism.
He was post-communist Poland's foreign minister in 1997-2000 and
had been a member of the European Parliament since 2004.
European Parliament president Hans-Gert Poettering attended the
funeral, as did Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and President Lech
Kaczynski. The United States sent Assistant Secretary of State Daniel
Fried.
Born into a Jewish family in Warsaw on March 6, 1932, Geremek
escaped the Warsaw Ghetto at age 11 and stayed in hiding until the
end of World War II. His father died at the Nazis' Auschwitz death
camp.
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