The Washington Post, Sunday, July 26, 1998; Page B08
Jacek Kalabinski, 59, Washington-based correspondent for a Warsaw-based daily newspaper and former Radio Free Europe editor and correspondent who also had been a translator for former Polish leader Lech Walesa, died July 24 at his home in Rockville after a heart attack.
At the time of his death, he was the correspondent of Rzezepospolita. He had worked for Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty in New York from 1984 to 1987, and then in Washington from 1987 to 1990.
Mr. Kalabinski served as Walesa's interpreter when the legendary Polish Solidarity leader addressed a joint session of Congress in 1989. He also is said to have penned the opening words to Walesa's speech, "We, the People," the ringing phrase borrowed from the preamble of the U.S. Constitution.
The phrase brought Congress to its feet, to cheer what many undoubtably believed was the first Polish leader in decades who had a true right to speak in the name of his people.
In 1981, Mr. Kalabinski, was president of the Warsaw chapter of the Polish Journalists Association and working for the Polish National Radio network, where he had been a news editor, anchorman, and foreign affairs commentator, when he was dismissed from his posts and the Association banned.
Though targeted for arrest after the imposition martial law by the Polish communists, he went underground and in 1982 and 1983 served as foreign editor and writer with the uncensored and clandestine newspaper, Tygodnik Mazowsze, before escaping to New York.
Mr. Kalabinski, who was born in Warsaw, received a master's degree in journalism from the University of Warsaw in 1961. He later attended the Ecole Nationale des Sciences Politiques in Paris and, in 1978 and 1979, was a professional journalism fellow at Stanford University.
Survivors include his wife, Barbara, and a daughter, Marta, both of Rockville; and his mother, Maria Kalabinska of Warsaw.