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The Karma Chronicles - US President Hoover & Polish Prime Minister Paderewski

May 14, 2012

I started a series called "The Karma Chronicles" on a fundamental principle established repeatedly in the Mahabharata and re-emphasized again by Śrī Kṛṣṇa in the Bhagavad Geeta. My first post was on Chase Blackburn and how he came to be in Superbowl XLVI.

Today, we continue the Karma Chronicles with the story of US President Herbert Hoover and Polish Premier Ignacy Jan Paderewski. Jan Paderewski was a well known pianist who according to General Rowny "was the Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Presley of his day."

For the story, we first we go to an article by General Edward L. Rowny.

The story of how Paderewski met Hoover is a fascinating one. In the mid-1890s one of the stops on Paderewski’s concert tour was at Stanford University. This event was a disastrous failure because the student in charge had not advertised the concert. Paderewski magnanimously began writing a check to cover the rental of the concert hall. When he asked how he should make out the check, the student in charge said “Herbert Hoover”. It was by this faithful happenstance that Herbert Hoover felt he owed Paderewski a favor. The opportunity to do so arrived when Hoover was put in charge of the US relief effort to Poland.

What was the impact of what appeared to be an unfortunate meeting? Now let us go to the website of the Independence Hall Association of Philadelphia.

In 1918 President Woodrow Wilson asked Hoover to head the non-governmental American Relief Administration (ARA). Grounded in the spirit of compassion, he ably organized a "peace army" that saved 350 million people from starvation and disease in the nations of Europe and the Middle East following the war.

A talented facilitator, he (Herbert Hoover) connected services and resources of American Poles, the American Red Cross, and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) to the afflicted peoples of Poland, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Austria, and Serbia.

In August 1919 during his visit to Poland, Hoover witnessed a heartbreaking scene in Warsaw: Twenty-five thousand children had walked barefoot to pay him homage. Within hours he telegraphed for help and 700,000 overcoats and 700,000 pairs of shoes were shipped to Poland before the onset of winter. Another half million coats and shoes were delivered in the following two years. The Russian invasion of 1920, which led to the occupation of half of Poland and the requisition of food and livestock by the invading armies, pushed Poland back to where it had been a year earlier. ARA work was extended in Poland and by 1922 half a billion meals were provided for her hungry and starving people.

Herbert Hoover eventually became the 31st President of the United States and held office from 1929-1933.

Hari Om and Namaskaar until the next post

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