(WARSAW) - Mourners paid tribute to Bronislaw Geremek, an anti-communist icon, historian and European parliamentarian cherished by Poles, during funeral ceremonies at Warsaw's St John's Cathedral and Powazki cemetery Monday.

"It is not possible to measure what our country owes you, and what I myself owe you personally," said Lech Walesa, former president and Solidarity trade union legend in his tribute, just over a week after Geremek's death in a car crash.

Walesa and Geremek were among the founding members of Solidarity in 1980, which went on to challenge Poland's communist regime for the next decade before it hastened communism's demise in Poland in 1989.

"I thank God for having been able to know you, for having been able to admire you and be your disciple," Walesa added.

"He was a Pole among Europeans and a European among Poles," said Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Poland's first prime minister after the fall of communism in 1989. The veteran Polish politician went on to laud Geremek's key role in Poland's peaceful transition from communism to democracy and his drive as Poland's foreign affairs minister to integrate Poland with NATO and the European Union.

Archbishop of Warsaw Kazimierz Nycz led the mass, which was broadcast live on several television channels, and was attended by President Lech Kaczynski, Prime Minister Donald Tusk and foreign dignitaries.

In a message read out by Nycz, Pope Benedict XVI lamented Geremek's passing as a "great loss for academia and politics in Poland and Europe."

Tadeusz Goclowski, the former archbishop of Gdansk, the northern port that was Solidarity's power base, said a grateful Poland was saying its farewells.

"Poland, free today, and reunified Europe, owe you a great deal," he added.

As well as being a political activist, Geremek was a leading scholar of medieval history, with a particular focus on France.

But he made history himself, becoming a legendary figure in the anti-communist opposition and in the post-communist era where he served as foreign minister between 1997 and 2000.

Geremek went on to serve as a deputy in the European Parliament from 2004 on the Solidarity list. He was 76 when he died in the car crash in Poland, on July 13.

The cathedral in Warsaw's Old Town, a stone's throw from where Geremek once lived, was packed with mourners, many of them average Warsaw residents.

"I've come to say farewell to Professor Geremek, he was extraordinarily wise, extraordinarily good -- he loved people," Barbara Rudnicka, 76, retired chemical engineer and Warsaw resident, told AFP. "I simply wanted to pay homage to him," she said, holding back tears.

After the ceremony, Geremek's coffin, draped in the red and white national flag, was carried in procession to Warsaw's historic Powazki cemetery.

He was buried next to Jacek Kuron, another famous anti-communist activist, who died in 2004.

Speaking at the foot of Geremek's coffin, Marek Edelman, 89, the last surviving commander of the World War II 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of Jewish partisans against Nazi German forces, saluted Geremek's "political and personal ideals."

Born a Jew, Geremek escaped the infamous Warsaw Ghetto with his mother as a child and survived the Holocaust in hiding with a Polish family. He rarely recalled this traumatic episode of his life.

Among those attending the funeral ceremony were the President of the European Parliament Hans-Gert Poettering and Daniel Fried, the current US Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs.

Poettering saluted Geremek as a "great Polish patriot and a great European" and "one of the principle architects of the new Poland."

Simone Veil, who is both a former French government minister and a former president of the European Parliament, along with Aleksander Kwasniewski, another former president of Poland.

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