The Catholic times. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1951-current, 1959-02-06
JOSEPH BREIC-
About Our
Soviet Guest

My father was never sentenced to slave labor
for worshipping God or for saying that human be-
ings have rights.
My mother did not go through life dreading the
midnight knock at the door that meant a visit from
degenerate secret police.
No brother of mine ever was tortured in a cellar,
or beaten within an inch of his life, or worked and
starved to death in a concentration camp,
My sisters were never violated by invading
hordes.
My children were not taken forcibly from nv
home and taught by atheist blasphemers to spy on,
and Ie A apogt' s the,r parents,
or crushed under tanks, or bayoneted, or broken
with blows from gun butts.
The streets on which l walk have never been
smeared with the blood of innocents.
No clergyman in any of the parishes to which
! have belonged has been tormented or murdered by
bestial men,
My country has not been overr,ln by gigantic
aggreSsor armies from a foreign power.
Never have l been forced to leave behind every
thing dear to me-my nation, my friends, my home,
my ork-and flee to some friendly land for my
lite and the right to call my soul my own.
TO PUT 1T SHORTLY, | am not a Hungarian,
not a Romanian, not a Pole, not a Lithuanian, not
a Lativian, not a Slovak, not a Creation: | am not
a refugee from the cruelest ~despotism this earth
has seen since AdOlph Hitler shot himself In a bomb
shelter Under Berlin.
| am not a victim of the vlciousness of conn1un-
ism; but | tell you this will cut out my tongue
before | will criticize any of comnnunism's victims for
PAOtCSLllS III PuUllI, do tDCy w IC llSHI. W W.
against this sinking tyranny.
AT this point, you begin to see my point. You
know that | am commenting on the visit OF Soviet
deputy premier Anastas Mikoyan to the US
| am not angry with President Eisenhower for
asking that the visitor be received with courtesy. |
am not angry about that, because | trust that Presi-
dent Eisenhower does not define courtesy as slobber-
ing. Further, | realize that as President he had the
obligation of seeing to the visitors safety on our
soil. He was entirely within his rights in making the
statement he did-especially in View of the fact that
at about the same time, he reminded us that COM
munist promises and treaties are not to be trusted
for one moment.
| am thoroughly disguised, however, with the
tailWagglng that went on among some Americans
over Mikoyan. -
/ know Of no one who was forced to associate
with the man, or to break bread with him. But /
concede that some may have found themselves in a
position in which it was difficult to avoid attending
one or another of the functions arranged for him.
All right. Let's grant that. But the courtesy we
owed to Mikoyan-not because he deserves it, but
because we are decent human belngS-Was at most
an icy courtesy. There was mo call for anybody to
behave as if Mikoyan were an acceptable person. And
certainly there was not the faintest excuse for smil-
ing upon him. hobnobbing with him., and fawning
upon him. st
l have withheld my remarks until Mikoyan was
out of the country; in such a situation there is always
some danger of seeming to c0ndone violence, or at
least of embarrassing our government. -
Now that he is gone, let me say that | feel dirty.
l feel ~disgraced over the fact that some Americans
took this man to their bosoms only two years after
the Soviet butchery of Hungary.
l apologize to the refugees in our midst for such
brainless cordially toward one of their tormentors.
| ask the refugees to understand that there are IT'S
million human beings in our country and some of
them could be more intelligent than they are.
And | salute Richard Cardinal Cushing for serv-
ing notice that he would neither receive Mikoyan, nor
attend any function in his honor, if he appeared in
Boston.