FROM THE PRISONS OF POLAND
Law, Martial
The following extraordinary accounts have come to us from Gustaw Moszcz, Polish affairs correspondent for the English periodical New Statesman and Nation. Mr. Moszcz, who has translated a series...
...We spent about an hour at the Voivodship party committee, and during that time the TV broadcast Jaruzelski's speech, which I'd had no time to listen to until then...
...K left the names and addresses of friends and parents who would look after her baby and begged the Milicja to tell the parents what had happened, and give the child to them...
...The enemy for the regime imposed by General Jaruzelski has always been open political debate and widespread democracy through the election of genuine representatives of the Polish working class...
...I asked what I could take with me but they said they had no orders as to what I could take with me, only instructions as to what I couldn't take, no sharp objects for example...
...I refused...
...Mainly I was thinking about the snow, and I was shivering with the cold, even though I was wrapped in the fur...
...During exercise we could walk outside for 30 minutes each day...
...The regime cannot retreat to a state of relaxation, even though this is the only route that offers anything less than an eventual civil war on a scale considerably more serious than occurred in Hungary in 1956...
...These plants and the size of it all, after Olszynka, gave us the impression of great luxury...
...This enterprising, new philosophical journal gathered up many leading young socialist intellectuals who sought a reform of Communist policies...
...They wanted me to sign something but I refused...
...From time to time there was some jam too...
...The rest of us, I imagined, were going to be subjected to threats, searches, curfews, harassments...
...Although the cells were locked, we could circulate letters and notes since there were holes in the walls next to the central heating pipes...
...I told them of the university senate meeting later that afternoon and, of course, the most vital task for me was to make contact with the students of the protest committee...
...These women who came from the Red Cross were all terribly afraid and didn't want to talk to us at all...
...They gave each other cigarettes and offered one to me but I refused as I don't smoke...
...We were all very tired and so just wanted to sleep, but the next morning we all felt that we wanted to go back to Olszynka rather than be locked up in this luxuriant cage—Olszynka had more "reality" to it...
...Of course, all messages had to be transmitted by word of mouth since there were no phones at that time...
...Our neighboring cell had Kuron's wife in it and had a different atmosphere —ours was very loose and informal, the cell was cleaned by anyone who cared to but next door there was almost a scout rhythm, with constant duties arranged for everyone and everything organized as a means of defeating boredom...
...Everything was in classical prison color—gray...
...There was some fear when we heard that we were to be moved, since we had no idea where we were going...
...on that Sunday, December 13...
...In the evenings we often sang hymns and had communal prayers...
...We arrived on January 15, and after a short " Anna Kowalska — leading member of KSS–KOR...
...The ZOMO was going to remove the photo but the Solidarity man protested, saying that it was his personal property...
...On Sunday evening a friend came round and said that she had heard that they had arrested my husband, it had been announced over the radio...
...He said simply, "Those fuckers can rot here, but why are they jailing innocent Solidarity people...
...As we left, there was a little scene with a neighbor of mine...
...The SB interrogators generally acted as if they were grateful that anyone even agreed to see them...
...I put on some warm boots, took a fur coat, picked up a toothbrush, and marched away...
...When it actually started there was a massive relief...
...that I began to realize that, well, I didn't understand my freedom either...
...I thought to myself, "Well, there used to be Stalinism, why are you shocked by all this now...
...I decided that morning to type a document, with two main points...
...Go to the party and see them about it...
...When he took the cuffs off and I held my hands up he just said, very quietly, "There's no need for that...
...All that time, we knew nothing of what was happening outside, except what we could hear on the radio, which was less than revealing...
...Highly nervous, the commandant refused to explain anything, merely saying that soon everything would beMeritum was one small indication of the short-lived thaw...
...So I took a bath, tried to calm myself down, and said to myself that if they came it would be about three in the morning...
...I said that we needed time to meet with these students, and we demanded that no decision be made concerning the use of ZOMO until the afternoon...
...When the Wujek tragedy happened, and we heard about it over the radio, there was praying and a speech from a window by one of the leaders of Solidarity.' The radio was switched on from 6 A.M...
...There were two short stops on the eight-hour journey to use the toilet...
...On Saturday telexes began arriving at Mokotowska Street, from all over Poland...
...Therefore I strongly insisted that they follow this plan of action...
...There were moments of great depression, I could see no decent resolution of all this—and I still can't...
...We would sometimes sing during exercise but that depended on who the guard was...
...At the same meeting the idea was expressed that we should make December 17 a day of protest against the decision of the authorities to again "solve" social problems by force...
...They did so...
...It was a dead, dark, empty city, with only the Milicja and Army patrols going round...
...All reported large-scale movements by the Milicja —not the Army...
...Never...
...After the first week, official newspapers began to appear, and there was a violent reaction in the prison when we read that an official government spokesman, Jerzy Urban, had announced at a press conference that conditions inside the camps were excellent...
...When I arrived they were very sleepy, and were grumbling that this wasn't their business...
...They were fortunate— many of their colleagues suffered physical violence...
...Many people went just to do this...
...To leave home and go away...
...Then they handcuffed us all, in twos, and I found myself handcuffed to the Solidarity leader...
...The child realized that something strange was going on and after a few hours took himself off to his grandparents...
...The meeting was held just a day after the attack on the Warsaw Firefighters' Academy.' The dominant mood was that we were now putting aside our factional differences inside the Union's Warsaw branch, and that we had to find new forms of self-defense...
...The night before we had been given bread and margarine for use the next morning...
...we said that we should try and push the authorities in charge of martial law into dealing directly with him, since we party members did not want to get into the position where we seemed to be administering the regulations of martial law...
...Another was a 50year-old woman, a Solidarity activist who used to write pieces for a publication and signed them with her own name...
...You get home with a rotten headache, feel miserable all next day...
...I asked who was there and they just said, "Milicja...
...I argued that if the authorities had decided on martial law, we should not be so naive as to think they would hesitate to eliminate such a small, insignificant group as university students...
...After 10 days I was freed, in one of the first batches to be released...
...I have been working in Poland as a free-lance journalist for longer than I care to recall, and certainly for longer than the brief period of Solidarity's legal existence...
...I couldn't get to sleep, and I was thinking over what we could do...
...As I was speaking to the students we heard that a large truck with ZOMO troopers was already stationed outside the student hostel, and we thought that it was perhaps already too late to prevent violence...
...I discovered that there had in fact been Milicja at my home during the Saturday night and early Sunday morning, but that they hadn't come in because a crowd of workers had been outside and scared them off...
...This day passed in a whirl, and I didn't get home until about 10 P.M...
...Then cases like hers became useful since they could release such people and show the world: "Look, people are being released all the time...
...There were no threats made against me but one of the peasants in my cell later said that during his interrogation the SB had said, "You went on strike to demand constitutional guarantees that you can own your land—see where it's led you...
...We refused to comply with that or any other routine prison behavior...
...Anyway, I left the building on Saturday evening about 8 P.M...
...But both the military and the party denied they had any power in this situation...
...The second was that, since we were politically responsible for what happened to the university, we party members in the university demanded a precise list of the internees and the basis on which they were interned...
...There were a couple of other people there whom I knew very well too, so the atmosphere was very friendly...
...I had had enough examples of the typical day there, which went like this: We were awakened at 6:30 A.M...
...When the first women arrived, even the blankets weren't ready so they had to sleep in the cold with nothing but what they stood up in...
...The next day, on December 13, I was awakened at about 7:30 A.M...
...Of course, we had to use the Milicja lavatories on the way, stopping at Milicja bases...
...The day following my release I had to report to the Milicja where I was again interrogated by the SB, a man I knew...
...But they chose to ignore such reports because they had heard the like all too often in 66 the past...
...We decided that we had no choice and that so long as holding onto the party membership meant we could do something to protect the university, we must do it...
...Supper was at about 6 P.M., milk soup with either noodles or oats...
...At the start our mood was one of shock, and we nervously listened to the radio all the time, since we thought we might learn something of what was going on outside by what wasn't said on the radio...
...At the start I had a lump in my throat all the time, but after a while I felt relief—it had all become clear, I could tell where I was going by looking out the window...
...It was headed, until his death in 1979, by Boleslaw Piasecki, who had been the leader of the prewar fascist party ONR-Falanga...
...There were many armed guards...
...I don't think there was a reply...
...This was sloganizing, of course...
...they merely said that it wasn't they who were interning people, and that it wasn't a party matter at all...
...My eyes began to ache and drip, and after a month there was at least one seriously ill woman in each cell...
...Zolnierz Wolnosci (Soldier of Freedom)—though not formally the party's organ but that of the armed forces—represents the ultraconservative tendencies in the PZPR, which frequently transports it over the brink of absurdity...
...I told him, and said that there were also some party secretaries there...
...They even organized self-education lectures among themselves...
...They would say to us, "Do you want to sign anything...
...A female warder then made a quick frisk, didn't even look in my pockets, and took me away to get some prison things...
...We listened in silence...
...The atmosphere was very tense, one could feel it, cut it almost...
...The guards kept to themselves, dealing with administrative affairs and supervising family visits...
...I was pleased to see so many old friends in one place, and they quickly filled in the details about their capture and what this place was like...
...This was so terribly tiring, because we had to listen to all the news, and commentaries after the news, which was especially boring...
...In fact, there were a lot of buildings with markings on them, especially where Milicja and military families lived, painted crosses, circles, all kinds of things...
...You talk and talk, but afterward you recall all the things you wanted to say and didn't...
...As tanks were rolling in Gdansk and Silesia, the Congress participants milled round the doors unable to decide what action to take...
...and our clothes were given back...
...What choice did I have...
...But you had to listen to all, because there was the occasional scrap of interesting information...
...We have you here, we can do what we like with you...
...Poland, close to the Soviet Union...
...They also said that negotiations had already started with Walesa and that the outlook was very positive on this score too...
...in our city, because I had an official permit to move about during curfew...
...One of the Milicja said, "I've a brother getting married soon, and I'll sing some of the songs at the wedding...
...They took her and the baby to the Milicja station, where a female police officer assured her that everything would be fine, and that the baby would be looked after...
...73 time the whole place had been organized very thoroughly, with singing and self-education classes...
...I had the strong feeling that there was a close analogy between what was happening in Poland and what befell the French Revolution, up to the moment when there was shooting in Paris aimed at peaceful demonstrators, and I expected something like that to happen...
...He had been awakened at 2 A.M...
...I didn't offer this advice too strongly since it was up to individuals, I just said there was no sense in meeting such people...
...By this time I had the strong feeling that it was now worthless being a member of the PZPR...
...I learned that the day before General Jaruzelski had met with Gucwa, the Sejm marshal, since on Monday, December 14, there was supposed to be a session of the Sejm...
...AlMa Pienkowska — health worker in Gdansk and founding member of Solidarity there...
...If you don't sign this paper then we can take your farm, we can keep you here as long as we like, your wife will be forced to look after the farm by herself . . . " and more such things...
...It went ahead, and the situation was such that we felt sure that the authorities would take some action to try and prevent its happening at all...
...Upstairs there were women watching color TV, and I rushed in to greet Anna Kowalska, Alina Pienkowska and Joanna Gwiazda...
...During that time one of the civilians was taken away, then came back and said, "They've interned me, the bastards...
...In the first day or so I had no time to sit back and consider my preferences...
...I met many people there whom I knew but even more who knew me or of me...
...I came home and there was no mark on my house...
...When they first arrived the commandant had tried to establish some sort of regime, and held a general meeting, during which all the handles were surreptitiously removed from the balcony doors in each room, and the windows were nailed shut...
...At Goldap there were a number of serious nervous breakdowns among the women, with some of them ending up in psychiatric hospitals, and some are still there, I believe...
...A very isolated spot, it was probably chosen to prevent easy access by visiting relatives...
...At first an articulate champion of Solidarity, he turned against the union after his appointment to deputy premier in February 1981, in time becoming one of Jaruzelski's closest advisers...
...They came in, asked for my documents...
...We began to fear that we could be there for months, even years...
...Breakfast was at 8 A.M.—something hot, usually soup, and we had some bread that was given to us the night before...
...The picture they had been given by the Warsaw authorities was much more optimistic than they had expected...
...The atmosphere in the cells differed greatly...
...We had learned that at least two people from the university had been interned, and that one of them was seriously ill and due to be hospitalized on December 14 for surgery...
...From time to time the idea of a hunger strike was raised but there was never a situation in which it became possible...
...There seems to be no general guide as to why people were released, just as there was no general code under which people were arrested...
...The cell itself was quite narrow, and at any one time there was room only for two people to move around...
...The first people to come and see us were from the Polish Red Cross, in the first week at Olszynka...
...About 10:30 A.M...
...About two or three weeks earlier I had been participating in a discussion organized by Meritum,3 which is now dissolved, of course...
...gained it considerable support inside Poland, and its leading figure, Leszek Moczulski, is still on trial for advocating such policies...
...We traveled in three large trucks, and about 70 of us were moved from Olszynka...
...Then he said that I should sign a paper saying that I had seen the internment notice, and I wrote at the bottom of it, "I have seen this," and signed my name...
...All our fears were predominantly that we would be put with the criminals...
...The first was with a secretary of the PZPR, the Polish United Workers' party (the formal name of the Polish CP), who was interned largely for his activity on behalf of greater democratization in the PZPR...
...Immediately the SB heard her mention the building where we worked they took her identity card and wanted to take her too...
...There was no shouting but their attitude was very hostile, decisive, and I saw there was no sense in trying to bargain with them...
...We missed lunch, didn't even think about such things as food...
...When the ZOMO arrived, they just arrested her...
...Everyone knew that the government was preparing an Emergency Powers Act, which had a number The Firefighters' Officers' Academy was occupied by the students in late November, who demanded that they be "demilitarized" and allowed to join free unions...
...We had said to the rector earlier in the day that we knew what a declaration of martial law meant, and that we had such strong emotional and political objections to it that as individuals we would choose to return our party membership cards immediately...
...He spoke very quietly and calmly, asked how things were, listened to us, said, "Take care," and gave a mass...
...Would they be willing to go home...
...The two people interviewed here conducted their political lives in the open, did not seek the forcible overthrow of the state, and committed no crime...
...He gave me over to another warder who was very hostile, shouting very loudly, giving orders in monosyllables...
...Of course, it is very difficult to say that the committee was finished, since a structure may be formally dissolved but the people involved still in place...
...He didn't say anything to the SB...
...After half an hour he came back and told me that the letter was rejected by the committee...
...The troops were changed once very three months at least, with different units being brought in to watch us...
...I felt that everyone there now relaxed a little, since we were the first people who did not propose to keep them in the dark...
...So we talked with my son and we thought it would be a long time before my husband would be released...
...Then an SB man showed me the internment decision and went away...
...56 We can hardly expect Solidarity to offer compromises when it has been forced into an "illegal" position...
...One of the people in the cell was a regional leader of Solidarity, who had escaped the roundup in Gdansk on the 12th, after the national meeting of the National Commission of Solidarity, and had made his way to our city, where a relative of his lived...
...It was unprepared and unheated...
...He actually said that this would damage the party...
...I didn't protest, just looked at the cuffs and thought to myself, "So this is how it is...
...I thought my flat was probably being watched, and of course there was a very early curfew, but I decided to remove from my flat two documents that were personally precious to me...
...Reports of the Milicja movements were not publicly announced at Gdansk...
...I simply had many things to do that had to be done...
...On Saturday, December 12, I was at Solidarity headquarters in Warsaw, on Mokotowska Street...
...The bars shutting across the corridors behind me made an unpleasant loud clang...
...In 1981 he executed yet another volte-face by joining the ranks of the party "liberals" and urging a reconciliatory policy toward Solidarity...
...He was walking down the street and made as if to approach me but I ostentatiously turned my back on him, because he looks a typical student type, and they would have loved to take him along too...
...the next day, when I switched on the radio...
...At a fixed time each day there was exercise, in a yard about 5 meters wide by 12 meters long, with a threemeterhigh wall around it, topped with barbed wire...
...The interrogations were of a classical type— we were told that Solidarity was evil and illegal...
...It was dark half the time, and only one of the two ceiling light bulbs worked...
...But they made this political declaration, and the whole debate was necessary to tell them exactly how dangerous things were—that they needed to be twice as clever in the future about how they organized and in their political thinking, and that street fighting is pointless with this type of regime, at least now...
...Later they would come on any official (that is state) holiday, as they weren't permitted to come on any Church festival...
...When we arrived at the party HQ, the people in charge had just received news concerning how things had gone across the country on the first day of martial law...
...All the time I was thinking I had to imprint this picture on my mind, since it's not every day a party secretary is handcuffed by the party he is a member of...
...Even this had no effect on these tough peasants...
...My documents, including the party card, were taken away...
...We guessed it must be from the Church, since none of the articles inside were our own...
...They were commissioned officers, led by a major, not ordinary soldiers...
...He had also refused to fire a member of KOR who worked in the food stores, whom the SB had been harassing for ages...
...He also said that some people would be released, some would be taken elsewhere, " The MSW is the Ministry of the Interior...
...But I was so depressed that frequently I preferred just to lie on my bunk and pretend to sleep, simply to avoid discussion...
...One day I was going along to see the prison doctor—I wasn't ill, it just made a break sometimes to get a tablet, and sometimes you could steal some paper—and in the corridor I met an ordinary convict...
...The students were in such a state of shock, we knew they would not be able to arrange any kind of demonstration, and we preferred that they go home because we feared there might be reprisals if they stayed and organized protests...
...People also wanted to get through this ordeal with dignity, and they consequently avoided talk about recent events leading up to martial law—we all felt it was important to avoid quarreling in the camps...
...The other man was 62 reading a Bible, and after a while he too was led away...
...I stood outside the cordon trying to see who was being taken away by the Milicja...
...I had backache and rheumatism and my left hand was swollen and stiff after a month...
...but everyone refused...
...A very few were released before Christmas...
...They switched on the radio at midnight on Christmas Eve so we could listen to the broadcast mass...
...When there was a chance to get a newspaper we always pleaded to have a copy of Zolnierz Wolnosci, since it was important for us to know the hard-line attitude of the top level of the regime...
...At about 6 A.M...
...They were impassive...
...The two interviews here were held with people of apparently opposing political views...
...I managed to tell them that after a few days the local train drivers (the railway line passed very close to the prison) would give a long blast on the train whistle when they went past, a greeting to us inside...
...They "could do nothing...
...The patrol spoke to me in a very friendly manner, as if I were one of them...
...Several subgroups emerged during my time there...
...After a while, a bit of chat and arranging, they gave her card back and let her go...
...At the start the source of these parcels was concealed from us, all that would happen would be that our names would be called out and we would have to go and collect 71 a parcel...
...There was simply nothing to do: no visits, no newspapers, no parcels, nothing at all...
...friends came round to discuss what had happened, and we tried to find out who had been arrested and who was still free...
...One, who was perhaps 18, had been taken from a very small village...
...Breakfast at 8 A.M., which was usually ersatz coffee...
...This time he miscalculated...
...On the contrary, I met several very good KPN women who were easy to get on with...
...There we met the first secretary and a delegate of the Politburo, who were terribly emotionally overPoland is divided into 49 sectors, geographically arranged, called Voivodships, which are the next rung down from the central government...
...I was told to write a letter stating whom I was leaving in charge of my child...
...Until about 10:30 A.M...
...We spent much of the first few days each retelling our stories of capture and arguing with the warders for the early release of K, who was let out after a week...
...I was shocked for a moment, not by the language but by the strength of feeling...
...The interrogator asked me what I wanted changed in the text...
...That was heartwarming news...
...We could communicate with people from other cells since there were four of these exercise boxes side by side...
...There are two levels in the building, with the ground level having a coffee bar and canteen as well as rooms...
...Soon after Jaruzelski's putsch, Reiff was replaced by the more pliable Zenon Komender, who steered PAX back to its traditional pro-Moscow, pro-regime (though no longer markedly anti-Semitic) stand...
...I myself wasn't asked to go and see anyone so I can't really comment but I counseled others not to go...
...And it was only on the Monday morning, December 14— when people kept coming up to me and said, "Are you still free...
...But two cells remained shut, one of them with Kuron's wife inside...
...We went to the university senate about 4 P.M...
...They said the first mass in the prison on Boxing Day (the first weekday after Christmas...
...During our first week the MSW colonel in charge of us, one Romanowski, began calling people from the cells to speak to him...
...People knew that if "they" said that something was going on, then something really big was happening...
...My own feelings were wrapped up in what we were trying to do, but I recall feeling that something terrible had happened, something important had collapsed and for the last time...
...When I arrived, things had reached a state of relative luxury, although the water was still icy...
...This was a time when our rector had absolutely no contacts with anyone else from the party, which had isolated him...
...There were no questions from them about our conditions, our needs or welfare...
...So when the girls came back they demanded that I teach them...
...The worst part of it was that you had to fish out the news items from all those rotten commentaries you had no patience for because they were so shitty...
...So generally the Gdansk meeting was well informed about the movements of the security forces...
...He questioned me about the party colleagues I had but I refused all cooperation, and I told him that despite his beliefs there was no plot in the party...
...Kulerski remained free and working in the underground as one of Solidarity's central spokesmen, until the end of the August 1982 riots, when he was captured and charged...
...I invited them to send a representative group from their midst to the senate meeting in the afternoon...
...I said that I had come to see them to modify our position because in a few hours the ZOMO battalion was going to arrive...
...None of these people seemed to have the imagination to realize that you just didn't do things like that anymore...
...Each room had a bathroom and at the start we even had our own keys to the rooms...
...There was nothing to discuss when he said, "Sign it...
...The prison personnel didn't know what the limits of their authority were...
...Lunch was about 1 P.M., soup and potatoes with a sauce...
...Theoretically we were supposed to get newspapers, but practically almost none were available...
...Gradually we all were becoming ill staying in that jail...
...The discussion was very heated, but 60 eventually they came round to my way of seeing the situation and agreed to drop the committee idea...
...Early next morning I drove with a friend to the university to see the rector...
...It's a stalemate that cannot last and, frighteningly enough, it seems clear that neither side is prepared to compromise...
...We also declared that we would be taking care of the families of the interned people...
...I was terribly tired and I turned on the radio to see if there was any news, but it was all so vague that it seemed nothing much was going on...
...We spoke at the Voivodship committee on his behalf and demanded that he be sent to the hospital as planned...
...I see that they don't know what to do and actually we don't either...
...I didn't feel that he or Werblan had any indication of what was going to happen, and I later learned that he was to know about it at midnight, when he was called by Rakowski...
...I decided to read until about I A.M., then eat something, find a book I would like to take, get myself ready...
...A ZOMO took her away saying "Look at this whore—she wants some men does she...
...According to reports, when he was arrested he showed remarkable nerve by curling up on the bench while awaiting his interrogation, and falling asleep...
...There were no exercise walks, and we spent the whole time indoors...
...They stated that if this group was not dissolved immediately then a ZOMO battalion would "have to pacify the university...
...Without them it would have been impossible to publish these documents...
...Before I left I told him that I had given back my party card, and this really angered him...
...About 7:30 P.M...
...I refused to give my clothes up at night, as we were supposed to do...
...Back home that night came the moment when it struck me that if they were going to arrest me, then this would be the time...
...In the Polish language, the word "snowman" has strong connotations of dumb stupidity...
...GUSTAW Moszcz n December 12, 1981, I was attending a meeting in Warsaw at the Sejm (parliament), where I met, among others, the vice-marshal of the Sejm, Andrzej Werblan...
...They wanted to engage in some kind of protest, but they rapidly became aware that the whole context had changed...
...There were two ZOMOs guarding us...
...When she was arrested, a huge group of armed ZOMO came for her and told her that she would be back 12 The Congress of Culture was perhaps one of the saddest casualties of the new regime...
...by students who told him that at midnight there had been an action by ZOMO forces, who had arrested students.' Since at that time no one knew what was going on, the students immediately formed a protest committee, which went to the rector for help...
...Inside the prison the female warders behaved correctly but coolly...
...There was almost no discussion on the future of the opposition movement since, I think, the majority didn't feel they were able to initiate this type of discussion inside jail...
...We were, of course, emotionally torn two ways: whether immediately to return our party cards or to hold off with this personal response for the sake of seeing what we could do for the university...
...There was no reason for her to be taken but they kept her and kept her, just to show that the SB don't make mistakes...
...I opened the door and the only thing I really wanted to say to them was, "You're early," but I didn't...
...I could hardly believe he was spouting this absurdity...
...At about 3 A.M...
...At the prison we had to go through the usual ritual, repeating our personal details and being searched again...
...We decided that we would go to the party's Voivodship committee to try and learn what precisely was going on, as well as to ask if there had been any central decisions about what was to happen to the universities and students.' I had responsibility for liaison with students, particularly those who had organized an ad hoc protest committee...
...I didn't go underground...
...The strike was broken by ZOMO units on December 2, students were sacked, and several Solidarity members were temporarily arrested...
...There was only one strange incident that night, as I was traveling from my flat to see another friend...
...but that we also felt that so long as our staying in the party made it possible for us to offer some protection to the university and the students, we would stay in the party and get what we could...
...Next day they came back with some extra warm clothing...
...It has been reliably calculated that over 30 percent of the PZPR had mobilized itself for great internal changes in both the party and the workings of the Polish state...
...Basically that is how it was until the transports to Goldap.'8 It was now the end of De" Gotdap was the site of the main women's internment camp, and is situated in the far north-eastern part of 72 cember...
...Nothing since then...
...It was an indication of the slackness of the SB—they had no firm orders to arrest this woman, it would have meant another 3 hours' fuss and bother, and they just didn't want all that...
...The new conditions under which we were living altered the degree of danger for both the students and the university in general...
...Not only this, but the two people we had met the previous day were absolutely furious with us for writing such a letter about the internees...
...One was an interview my husband had given...
...It had been the aim of the horizontal structures' movement in the PZPR to avoid a confrontation between the party and Solidarity, with particular stress on the need for the party to rid itself of its confrontational elements...
...In the first hours of martial law we had, however, to be very conscious of the fact that those who imposed the regime would be quite prepared to smash any form of weak opposition, and this had to be avoided...
...After a very short time the two groups merged, NZS is the acronym for the Independent Students' Union (Niezalezne Zwiazek Studentow), which came under severe attack by the regime before it was made illegal after martial law...
...the same loud warder came along and shouted out, "Go wash yourselves...
...In June 1968 he published an article in Miesciecznik Literacki (Literary Monthly), in which he provided the ideological rationale for the anti-Semitic campaign then sweeping the country...
...for example, we should stand when spoken to by prison officials...
...The breaking of the strike seemed, on reflection, to be a run-through for the type of action that was to happen throughout Poland on December 13 and thereafter...
...Every cell had seven metal bunks with two levels to each bunk, so that each could hold 14 people...
...During these early days street patrols were frequently led by very senior officers, sometimes even colonels, as if the military needed to have such officers on the streets to keep watch on the actions of private troopers...
...Suddenly I saw a man in the middle of the street, waving his arms frantically, signaling to us for the van to stop...
...They asked us to sign loyalty declarations, but as time went by they showed less and less interest in having us sign anything...
...When you needed the dentist you had to travel into the local town under escort—the guard was watching you and an SB man was there too, watching the guard...
...The second leaflet to appear was already circulating at that time, and it said that Bujak had not been taken and that he had returned from Gdansk to Warsaw...
...Of course, it was dark inside but later it emerged that it was a three-person cell with seven inside it, then me, making eight in all...
...I just see the hopelessness of the situation...
...At the start we demanded that we be treated as internees and not ordinary criminals, and specifically that the cells be opened and we be given free access to one another...
...Seven women, three tampons...
...When my turn came, I said I would not sign something implying that I had ever carried out anti-state activities...
...One was a student detained for her activity on the Committee for the Defense of Prisoners of Political Conscience, a committee the authorities really detest...
...When I was freed, of course, the first thing I did was to go and see my husband in jail...
...We were put on a bus, having been led from the jail between two ranks of armed ZOMOs...
...I had the vague idea of going back later to catch up on some work, but there was lots of snow, and hot tea at home, so I didn't return...
...There were never any visits permitted for the Primate's Committee for the Interned—they were never accorded the status given to the Red Cross...
...There was no love lost between the soldiers and the SB...
...Quite early on we began to get parcels from the Church...
...We referred to it as "previously boiling water...
...We arrived at Goldap in the evening and it was a total shock...
...by a relative who, on learning about the declaration of martial law, had come to see if I had been taken or not...
...It completely stunned me, I had no idea what to do, and I just sat down in a state of shock, for what seemed like an age...
...After two days we learned, as we still tried to calm down K, that two cells away from our own K's mother was staying...
...The other internee was a senior party member, democratically elected at city level...
...When I arrived there were five other women in my cell, all of them taken on Monday...
...It was so cold, and from time to time squads of ZOMO moved amongst the crowd, menacing them and telling them to go home...
...The food in that camp was starchy, aimed at filling rather than giving nourishment...
...Twice a day they brought round buckets of hot water, but since the whole process was so slow it quickly cooled...
...On Monday, December 14, at 8 P.M., the SB came...
...We collected a couple of other people and went together to the university...
...It is edited by a department of the PZPR's Central Committee...
...And it had been my view that the size and speed of the radicalization of society would be determined by the behavior of the authorities...
...Moszcz, who has translated a series of documents from the "horizontal structures' movement" in the Polish United Workers' party (Poland's CP), still lives and works in Poland...
...We wrote the letter to the Voivodship party committee, and a colleague came with me to deliver it...
...We were there at the time of day when the decree concerning martial law, not yet being ready, so far had not been posted all around the city...
...The very second they left with him, another team arrived to take her too...
...The people on duty at the jail took away all my things...
...It doesn't mean that you will be released because some people sign the document and don't mean it, but it will at least speed up the process of your release or eventual placement elsewhere...
...It was late in the evening when I got back home...
...I didn't have any books, and the few books in the prison 64 library were junk...
...WRON — Military Council for National Salvation — the name of the Jaruzelski governing agency...
...The door was extremely heavy metal, with four locks...
...There were some incredible scenes where the leaflets were stuck up on the walls, with crowds stopping to read them, people pushing each other to get a better look at them...
...I was given a metal mug, spoon, and bowl, and three old, gray, heavy, stiff blankets...
...The guard switched on the light for a moment and when I turned round I saw the face of a very close friend and I was immensely cheered that I was with our people...
...Jaruzelski informed Gucwa that there would be no demand for the passing of legislation granting Extraordinary Powers to the state at the session.' While at the Sejm, Reiff called on the phone and asked what the schedule was for the Monday morning session...
...Nevertheless we were the first direct source of information as to what martial law meant, since the TV-announced decree didn't give a total breakdown of the regulations...
...At the senate meeting a group of students was present that was representing the protest committee...
...It was a fine moment—a leader of Solidarity chained to a secretary of the PZPR...
...Almost no one signed the paper in the form that it was presented and later the SB were almost begging us to sign...
...I emphasized that although we needed the skill and determination of students, we must make sure that students were protected from any direct violence, because both they and the university itself were defenseless...
...Some stopped us from singing, but some were pleased that we were cheerful...
...Early in the morning of our move the convoy chief came round and said very politely that we were going to Goldap, that there would be some stops on the way...
...The central heating didn't work, there was wind gusting through the window, and it was bitterly cold...
...to 10 P.M., switched on and off from a central point outside the cells...
...We didn't know what or whom to believe, and perhaps they didn't either...
...The Milicja people in charge were very correct and were happy to hear us singing our songs, and some of them even learned a few...
...Like so many other PZPR activists at lower levels, Witold is a committed socialist with high ideals that have been shattered by measures of martial law...
...I decided that we should try and exert some kind of pressure on the Voivodship authorities in this direction, by writing a letter...
...In that way I learned that they were about to arrest me...
...I only learned of the state of war at 8 A.M...
...He refused to open his door and instead stood on his balcony, shouting out with a loudspeaker that all the neighbors, workers, should leave and go into the factories and let people know that Solidarity members were being arrested...
...Then he said, "If they're jailing party people then the whole world really is going crazy...
...Nevertheless, underground Solidarity bulletins soon began regularly to appear, even there...
...Later I learned that this neighbor had been in the country for the weekend, and knew nothing of what had happened until he came back to Warsaw...
...At that time Reiff was still the leader of PAX, and also a member of the Council of State...
...The two ZOMO troopers were chatting about the awful weather, how many people might be coming in tonight, and how they wanted to be home...
...Both persons are not referred to by their real names...
...On the journey we were given hard-boiled eggs and bread and some ersatz coffee...
...They said that they took this as a gesture of goodwill, to which we said that we weren't interested in discussing any gestures with them...
...But we couldn't communicate between the cells because none of us knew how to tap out messages...
...They were told that lights out and silence was at 10 P.M...
...Jews, wrote Werblan, always disproportionately represented in the PZPR, have been the carriers of "cosmopolitan" and "unpatriotic" attitudes...
...The telephones weren't working, the child had a very high temperature and was bleeding from the nose...
...The SB didn't ransack the flat, just looked in all the rooms and cupboards, to see if anyone was hiding...
...They led me to a waiting car and one sat on either side of me in the back seat...
...Nobody ever expressed any regret about their activities, and we all recognized that we were the same people...
...When I was put in a cell it was completely dark...
...By early 1982 he was dismissed from the Sejm and the Marx-Lenin Institute, though he was allowed to keep his chair as professor of history in the Polish Academy of Sciences...
...The women were warned to keep away from the windows as the soldiers below had orders to shoot...
...The rector went back to the university in the face of this stone-walling...
...We also gave advice on the legal status of martial law, as well as an interpretation of the events so far, at least as we were aware of them, which was not much...
...57 of this nature were to happen, I would be among the first on the list...
...That morning I had been shown a paper by an SB agent, stating I was to be interned, and where: The document stated that I was being interned since my freedom would endanger the security of the state, since my former activities had been directed against the government's authority, and that I had encouraged people not to obey the legitimate rule of the regime...
...The first few days were also spent analyzing if this was a setback for Solidarity, if everything was lost, or if it was the first step in a long struggle...
...Nobody made any official statement that I had been interned, nothing at all...
...I was eager to give a very strong speech...
...I sat there for 90 minutes...
...We suffered most from the lack of something to drink— only one cup a day of something made from powder, which was disgusting...
...The other was a worker from Zyrardow and was probably arrested in revenge for the massive strikes organized there...
...Later we reflected that if the situation had reached this point, then either the Russians would intervene or at the very least we would never see the outside world again, not for a long time anyway...
...I spent most of my time just willing myself to go through each day, just to survive the tedium...
...So we tried to send on these messages, but all the lines were engaged between Warsaw and Gdansk...
...These Red Cross women were all extremely elegant, wearing elaborate makeup and fine clothes, and they were all terrified...
...Otherwise they had about them a professional, expressionless air...
...It seemed that at the moment the best thing was to establish some kind of unofficial structure to care for the families of the internees...
...They proved to be extremely brutal in many actions, and as full-time professionals they are the most "reliable" forces (estimated to number 25,000-30,000 men) at the disposal of the regime...
...Everyone in the cell was asleep but one woke and said to me, "Come on, we'll find somewhere for you to sleep—we're all in the same boat now...
...On that journey I was accompanied by two SB guards, one who tried to be nice and entertained me with conversation, and another much nicer since he just kept his mouth shut...
...The prison warders and the SB had contact, though, and almost every night they had enormous drinking sessions together, looking exactly like those of the old Russian songs about the Czar's officers stationed far from home, songs tnat speak of nothing to do, boredom and vodka...
...They broke his door down, came in and beat him up, but nevertheless quite a few people escaped through his shouting out, and one result was the presence of workers outside my building, though I didn't know about it at the time...
...We went to the lavatory six at a time, in the building, along corridors, then downstairs to the lavatories, and all along the route there was a line of Milicja, right up to the door, to make sure none of us escaped...
...They were silenced by the only weapon left to the Polish political conservatives: prison and, when that failed, social isolation...
...I thought that they would crush opposi" KPN or the Confederation for an Independent Poland (Konfederacja Niepodlegej Polslci) is perhaps the regime's most hated opposition group, though its highly nationalist and occasionally anti-Semitic tendencies have aroused little interest in it outside Poland...
...So they talked to him for a bit and then agreed to take him and the child to a hospital...
...They didn't like this and refused to take it...
...He took it in while I waited outside...
...There was almost a riot when this news circulated...
...I recall a similar innocence at the building in Mokotowska Street, where people were trying to talk to the ZOMO, while water cannon loomed over them, ready for action...
...Sometimes the telexes came with urgent requests to pass this news on to the Gdansk meeting, because the regions themselves were not in touch with Gdansk...
...She was saying SB—the secret police (Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa) or political police of the Security Office (UB), since the mid-I950s part of the Ministry of the Interior...
...we went back to the Voivodship party building to tell them what had been decided and that the protest committee was done with...
...We literally had to force them to promise that they would try and learn what was happening to our children and families...
...I felt that I had to let them know that students were still needed, and that anything could happen with our participation, including open street protests, but that such a decision could not be taken in isolation from the workers...
...But she told them that she had left her child with some neighbors, and that she wanted to go home and get the child...
...Sometimes they asked questions about our friends and tried to split cells against each other...
...The gentlemen with me were obviously very satisfied with themselves, there was something in them that showed they were enjoying their revenge, as if to say, "Well, you wanted to cut our throats but now we have you instead...
...We decided the students should be given permission to return home that same day...
...Many were jailed through obvious absurd error, such as one girl who a month before martial law had taken a job in local government after having been a Solidarity typist...
...The first parcels must have come from the store they keep for the poor but that didn't matter because we put everything on—it was like a refrigerator there...
...Of course there were moments when we joked around, and in our cell there were excellent people, including two peasants who always had the best jokes...
...He showed us the room, four people to a room, with comfortable beds and clean, light space...
...The place was built about five years ago and is supposedly set in very pleasant surroundings, but we naturally saw little of those...
...But they wouldn't talk to us on this matter...
...In late 1980 his successor, Riszard Reiff, disavowed Piasecki's hardline and anti-Semitic policies and, after ridding PAX of some of its most objectionable leaders, came out fully in favor of Solidarity and the "renewal...
...We drove to another jail where some officers gave me my papers...
...We demanded that these two people obtain information for us as rapidly as possible concerning what should be done with students and the university...
...On that Sunday, December 13, I got up and dressed and went to see a friend who was first secretary of our party committee...
...We weren't members of the senate but that didn't matter...
...But I said that I reserved the right to decide when I would leave the party...
...On the way out he put a tiny toy into my hand, for good luck, a little soft toy that he had just been given a few days ago...
...I didn't have much time in which to think, "Why haven't I been arrested...
...But I was released...
...From there I was taken in a freezing police van to Olszynka Grochowska...
...The one I met complained that often internees were abusive...
...The priests were also obviously moved, and the section chief warder seemed very nervous...
...Then two people brought round the food...
...No mistake," they said...
...We had been discussing the situation some days previously, even weeks ago...
...all three secretaries of the university's party committee went along to the Voivodship committee...
...We were also given thick stockings—but, of course, nothing to hold them up, so they just kept falling down—and a cotton nightgown too...
...We demanded from the city party authorities that they give us a list of university internees as soon as possible...
...Some of the older women were very ill and could not have sustained it, and besides there was no way of passing on word that we were on hunger strike...
...The regime is laying the ground for its own destruction...
...This movement, known as the "horizontal structures' movement," was crushed at the start of martial law, and the hope that the PZPR might eventually become a unique post-Stalinist Communist party, prepared to share power with genuine representatives of the working class, was lost with this destruction...
...It didn't matter to me what time it was, despite the curfew, starting then at 10 P.M...
...The only place where I ever had really fresh bread was in jail, since there was a bakery on the premises...
...It was horribly cold and I decided, as there was nothing I could do there, to go back home, still feeling stunned...
...lights out at ten...
...Christmas Day was the first time priests arrived...
...Besides, that kind of life is extremely difficult to sustain...
...During the bus journey the Solidarity leader told me his escape story, how, during the search at the first jail, the ZOMO officer had flicked through his wallet and found a picture of Walesa...
...Some people tried to have political discussions in the cells, about what was going to happen, what they could do, what the mistakes of Solidarity were, and we even had clandestine bulletins distributed in the cells...
...A week before December 13 there was an open meeting of Solidarity delegates in the Warsaw region, and I was present...
...The next day I learned that there had been an attempt at a strike in one of the major factories outside the city, but that this had been rapidly quelled when the factory was surrounded by a ZOMO batallion, which threatened that if work didn't begin in 30 minutes there would be a "pacification...
...This was about three in the morning of December 15...
...I demanded that we be given our warm clothing back, and eventually we were...
...I wrote that I was not going to enter into anti-state activities, and then he asked me to sign his piece of paper...
...They all got up and welcomed me...
...him...
...When we arrived at a cell he opened it and pushed me in...
...After two more days the central heating had reached the temperature of a tepid hand...
...There was so much dust and dirt around that we didn't like storing the bread overnight...
...Then he was taken out...
...After about two hours someone came and just held out a pair of handcuffs toward me...
...The students didn't agree to this, and after the senate meeting ended we carried on the discussion in the corridor, where I insisted that they drop this absurd form of protest...
...They didn't look through the papers I had, just removed them...
...but this too was ignored...
...And so it goes on...
...You could sleep, but only dressed in everything you had, with the blankets wrapped round you...
...This group was in total confusion when we arrived...
...I found myself, at one point, jammed tightly next to an SB man whom " Hannah's husband is still in prison...
...We decided to hold a meeting of the university senate at 4 P.M...
...They knew something was going on round Lodz and near Radom, and they knew of two strikes in Silesia...
...The rector was already there...
...On the bus, which was windowless, we were chained to the seats...
...And other questions, "Would there be a general strike...
...There were suggestions that we should form workerguards in case the authorities staged an attack on the large factories...
...Then he came back and collected his bag and said, "See you in the camps...
...You could buy things from a cart that went round—some jam, soap, an onion, things like that...
...We were guarded by a man with a gun and short-wave radio...
...58 wrought...
...Both were armed with long white clubs and machine pistols...
...With a child...
...Those left behind were released three days later because they were all so ill...
...When they stopped the truck and began to take her off, she protested, probably because she didn't know where she was...
...In the afternoon I went back to Mokotowska, at the moment when it was being surrounded by ZOMO for the third time that day...
...It wasn't only the fact that the letter had been rejected, but while we were waiting outside the Voivodship building we had noticed that all those sectarian party functionaries who had long ago been democratically voted out of office were now back...
...They tried to force us to accept the normal prison regulations...
...65 We could grasp that there were very serious clashes, and the first reaction was fury that these bastards could reach the point of shooting down workers...
...This was astonishing...
...He said, "Take this piece of paper and just write on it what you are prepared to sign...
...On that drive I could see the city through the windows...
...As we entered the building, the hall seemed quite luxurious, with fantastically large palms in the foyer...
...Anyway, that evening we stated there was no need to attack the university since the students were all going home...
...I would like to thank not only Witold and Hannah but also several Polish friends who cannot be named here—but I trust that if they ever have a chance to read this, they will know whom I mean...
...The SB were furious with him because he was a close friend of the regional leader of Solidarity, and had permitted Solidarity to put up posters inside the food stores...
...We too were experiencing a social revolution, and everything pointed to the time when there would be a clash between society and the authorities...
...We were unsure, earlier in the week, if the meeting of the National Commission at Gdansk would take place...
...I wanted to let them know that party secretaries were being arrested so I told them who I was...
...The priests with him brought packets of cigarettes (at the same time saying that we smoked too much), and even put in each cell three tampons...
...Roughly speaking, the warders weren't interested in what we did inside the cells...
...We arrived and the students who had left returned...
...He and the vice-rectors stayed on until 6 A.M., when the radio first announced what was going on...
...This instruction in fact annulled the statutes of the PZPR and gave unlimited power to the executive body of the party at local and regional levels—which meant that all power was then vested in the two people standing in front of us...
...He went to the city commissar appointed by Warsaw, a general, to try and get the commissar to arrange for a delivery of coal to the hospital...
...For many weeks I had been writing articles arguing the need to avoid confrontation, and I felt that what I was doing now was consistent with that role...
...She also said that there were mothers and daughters in the same prison, and we should in some ways be grateful not to have free access...
...In the cell on the other side was a teacher of Polish history, and so they had their own seminars...
...On January 3, Archbishop Glemp came and visited each cell...
...He agreed to this, and I signed his paper only after I had made some pen strokes indicating• my additions and stating that what I wrote was an integral part of the whole document and must be accepted as such...
...59 agreeing that it wasn't the time for factional struggles...
...There were a great many soldiers outside guarding the compound, and there were the SB who interrogated us too...
...This camp originally was built by the Nazi forces in the last war, though it's now a regular prison...
...So we, the party committee, came uninvited, but there was a sort of unspoken understanding that we should all work together as the rector had respected our activities in the past, even though he was not a party member...
...Only later might we perhaps do something more...
...The atmosphere among the prisoners in the camp was like that of a large, united community...
...we decided, after hearing the rector's report on the night's events, that the only thing we could do was to get as much information as fast as possible...
...But in the short distance between the friend's house and my own I was stopped by an army patrol, and I showed them my curfew permit and party card...
...He had done nothing at all, only stuck up some Solidarity posters when it all started back in August 1980...
...A11 this took us to about two or three in the afternoon of December 13...
...They gave to our first secretary from the university a special Politburo instruction, at which he was permitted to glance for merely a few minutes...
...Their reaction was so hostile that later that day I told the rector I no longer saw any way of defending myself, never mind the university...
...The first stressed that the rector had behaved very responsibly in the current situation...
...In the meantime another woman friend of mine had arrived, who had worked at Mokotowska with me...
...Olszynka is a prison for people awaiting trial and sentencing and the whole building is on one story with very odd acoustics, a loud echo following you as you walk down the corridors...
...Much has happened since these interviews were held and yet, as I write in September 1982, the future is still unclear for Polish aspirations toward political freedom...
...They took away our heavy outdoor clothes and gave us prison jackets...
...The fear the regime had of intellectuals who were to attend it speaks out of a story I heard about this cancellation...
...We were waiting to hear an answer to the question, "Would Poland rise up or not...
...I also had my party card with "party secretary" stamped inside it...
...The SB had some talks with us and after a few days they took a few people away with them and tried to make them sign the usual declarations...
...Everything, they said, was beyond their control...
...I was there when martial law was imposed, and I had the rare opportunity to study the reactions not only of colleagues and friends but of a whole society, as it slowly underwent a forced silence all the more depressing when contrasted with the previous period of totally open debate and discussion...
...In Olszynka I don't recall anyone having a breakdown, and my cell was probably exceptionally calm...
...What is perhaps surprising for many people in the West is that both the PZPR ordinary rank-and-file membership and long-standing opposition figures (the two "extremes" represented here) concur in their views as to the most viable solution for Poland's political situation...
...The front-line troops used by the regime to crush strikes and any opposition are the motorized units of Milicja, or ZOMO (Zmotoryzowane Oddzialy Milicji Obywatelskiej), created by Gomulka in 1957...
...We decided to try and protect the university in some way, and our first thought was to ask the rector what information was available...
...Although I was in prison for the first time it didn't feel strange...
...We distrusted them and treated them with reserve but they never once tried to break through this attitude of ours...
...Of course, they could easily have been provocations by the security services, I don't know...
...what was going on, and already seemed to have been thrust aside, and excluded from political affairs...
...I also asked them not to become involved in any protest committee, since this was already regarded by the authorities as a conspiracy...
...But he didn't notice me...
...They asked to see my friends' documents, and then asked me if anyone could look after my child or if I wanted him to be left in an orphanage...
...He became very angry and said, "If you knew what your friends are doing against you . . . " but I interrupted him and said this was no argument for me, and what they did was their concern...
...The Boxing Day mass was the first group meeting we had, and it was very emotional, almost crying, holding hands and being together...
...we found ourselves at Ols68 zynka, and the first moments involved a detailed search of me and they took away everything that identified me...
...I said it was important that the students see what help the workers needed, and that students didn't simply offer their own heads to be cut off...
...I was mentally prepared that, if anything PAX, a pro-regime Catholic lay organization, was founded in the late 1940s...
...At that time I thought that the regime was going to arrest only the leadership of Solidarity...
...The general said to him, "Why come to me...
...There was a translator from the Congress of Culture, arrested for other reasons.' 2 Another was an activist in the peasants' opposition movement who also had a husband who was active in KOR...
...This brought us to about 10 P.M...
...We were all released from the cells, as the mass took place in the corridor...
...For some it was a shock to see me there, and there was one incident that sums it up for me...
...EDS...
...We haven't taken power, we're not the authorities...
...This proposal was accepted by the overwhelming majority...
...There are still as many as 6,000 people imprisoned in Poland on purely political charges, and the state has recently initiated prosecutions of leading intellectual dissidents on spurious charges of attempting to overthrow the state by force...
...Only then did I discover who I was with...
...He again tried to get me to collaborate, to tell him about my contacts with factories and journalists, but I refused...
...We all felt that now they could never retreat, and that after Wujek everything was simply so much the worse for the regime, since people would never forget this...
...The first meeting with people from outside other than priests was on December 29...
...My son was just ending a bout of flu, and he quickly took his temperature, which was over 38°C...
...I was sitting down and getting drowsy, because it took ages to go through all this routine...
...He asked me what my plans were and I said, "It depends on how much time I have to consider my plans...
...In the middle of April there were still over 100 women there...
...69 home the next day, in time to make breakfast for the child...
...They knew that the students had formed a protest committee, and when the first announcements of martial law came through they were in a very difficult position, since the students had already put into action something illegal...
...And the people went to work...
...Between one and two in the afternoon we'd go to the library or the doctor...
...She headed a one-parent family, bringing up an eight-year-old child...
...So, handcuffed together, about 15 of us, we were driven to a camp...
...Were the factories rising up or not...
...We drove to the Milicja station where they placed me in a small room along with two other civilians...
...I know that such people as Bujak, Walesa, and Gwiazda knew of these reports, and they were also aware of the closing-in of Soviet military vessels around the Baltic...
...The person on duty at Warsaw was Witold Kulerski," and he sent a telex to Glemp and Jaruzelski, asking for clarification of what the maneuvers meant...
...There was a KPN girl in the cell who knew for certain that if not today, then tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, then at a time three years or ten years from now we would see barricades and fighting—and then an independent Poland again...
...At one point Hannah says that neither "side" in the conflict knows what to do...
...We had come to the conclusion that the next few weeks would bring a decisive turning point for the whole Polish experiment...
...Joanna Gwiazda — radical activist member of Solidarity and wife of Andrzej Gwiazda, who contested the leadership of Solidarity against Walesa at the first national Congress of the Union, in the fall of 1981...
...The waiting room was full of people and there were a few I recognized who were trying to see me...
...It was, however, shown to us there...
...I asked the students to ascertain quickly what the feelings of the students as a whole were...
...Later the Archbishop's Committee for the Interned sent whole boxloads of tampons...
...They told me to dress and said I must go with them...
...They weren't aggressive and asked me where I worked...
...At about 10 A.M...
...and that possibly some married couples would be allowed to live together in jail...
...All your hopes were raised and none fulfilled...
...At the end they were asking us for oral declarations that we weren't interested in politics, things as weak as that...
...At the time the news was in such a form—it would be suddenly announced that in such and such a town work was progressing normally, and from this it was possible to deduce that probably work had not been normal before...
...I said that some form of protest action might be essential in the future but that first we needed to know what the reaction from the workers would be, since only that would determine the scale of reaction to martial law...
...I managed to talk to the rector and tell him the course of the discussions I'd had with the students...
...But they came at 11:30, four of them...
...and went home...
...We concentrated on trying to read it quickly and take notes from it...
...The woman herself had heart trouble and in general is a very nervous person...
...I played a lot of chess, tried to teach a cell mate English, and gave a lecture or two in my academic discipline...
...and roll calls would be at 6 A.M...
...The man in charge of the place seemed rather like a hotel porter, showing us around, dressed in a very sporty tartan shirt...
...There wasn't even water at the start, and the first washing was done with melted snow...
...It was as if they were simply doing their duty...
...They said there was some disorder in Gdansk and public transport was not operating there...
...Obviously, the imposition of martial law signified that the extremist personalities in the party, those seeking confrontation, had finally triumphed...
...After visiting a friend's house I returned home at about 11 P.M...
...We kicked up a fuss and eventually the female head warden of the prison came along and said that it was not her responsibility as we were not under the supervision of the prison but of the Milicja, and they had instructed her as to how we should be treated...
...There were two spy-holes, one set in the door itself and the other virtually a small window in the wall...
...There were very few buses around, and so after waiting for ages you were very crammed on board...
...But you know, if people are in prison for the first time and they are new to this game, they have an urgent need to tell their captors what bastards they are...
...The manager of the local state foodstore chain was also in our cell...
...She had a 41/2-month-old baby...
...K made a row the first few days she was in our cell to learn what had happened to the baby, but no one would tell her anything...
...I held out my hands and the cuffs were put on me, and I was led out to a waiting car...
...The women spent a long time trying to get him to see that there were also eight hours between 11 P.M...
...Even so, he was on the list of those to be taken...
...Very early on we had demanded that a mass be said inside the jail, no matter whether we were believers or not...
...The two party officials at the Voivodship committee said that they knew already of some publishing activity going on at the university, organized by an illegal student protest committee...
...Those bastards really don't have a clue what they're doing, do they...
...They gave me my party card, and I said, "You can keep it, I don't want it any more...
...The Milicja did neither but instead put the baby in a state orphanage...
...The political debates during those first ten days were limited to analyzing the news from the radio, trying to determine what was really happening outside, as opposed to what the media said was happening...
...The ZOMO trooper gave it back saying, "Well, if that's the kind of family you have then keep it...
...Reiff didn't know exactly Andrzej Werblan, though a socialist in his youth, has served Poland's Communist party (PZPR) since 1948 in various capacities: as a member of the Secretariat and one of its principal ideological spokespersons, as director of the Marx-Lenin Institute, and as one of the deputy speakers (or marshals) in the Sejm, Poland's parliament...
...This was after I had learned in a very friendly and informal way (since they all knew and trusted me) what their plans and intentions were...
...At about 8 A.M...
...They were still very nervous and behaving as if under extreme pressure, without any control over events...
...I said that we needed students to make contacts with the workers, but that this couldn't be done under the formal heading of a "protest committee...
...For example, there were no conflicts between KOR and KPN people, no accusing each other of tactical errors or the like...
...on December 13...
...With regard to the students we decided that, even without central instructions from Warsaw, we should cut the term short, since it was very close to Christmas...
...We were joined the next evening by two more, one from Skierniewice where she had been on duty in the local Solidarity branch...
...Two pairs of men came to see us, one pair introducing themselves as SB people, the other as prosecutors...
...Our short conversation was taken up with who was taken and who in hiding—there wasn't time for more...
...It was banned, along with other new intellectual developments, by the military rulers, after only two issues...
...Nothing special during the evening...
...A small Fiat arrived and two Milicja got out and told them politely that they should disperse as martial law had arrived...
...This was still the first evening, December 13...
...the rector went to the MO base in the city and demanded a meeting with the commandant...
...They were very short and told simply that ZOMO had attacked Mokotowska...
...Eventually everyone refused to talk to these people...
...On December 12 a team of ZOMO came to arrest her husband...
...I thought my child would act as some kind of shield for me, since in the past they had only arrested one member of a family...
...About 1 A.M...
...In our section of the jail there were 70 women, and obviously the section hadn't been in use for some time...
...There was a knock at the door—I was sitting reading some theoretical book—and I had the distinct feeling that now they'd come...
...There were no bars in the window but a very thick glass plate with wire netting set into it, and very little light...
...2 After this meeting I returned home, very tired, and went to sleep...
...Dinner was at six and then at eight singing and prayers...
...Of course, after that many intellectuals took highly critical stances against the regime, but all too many again are disguising their real feelings...
...I also asked them to put me in touch with the student protest committee that had been formed earlier, and an intermediary who spoke for the committee arrived and spoke with us...
...they would switch on the lights and count us, sometimes losing count as we kept on sleeping underneath the mass of blankets and coats...
...They had sole authority...
...It was to take place during the December 13 events, and when participants arrived on that Sunday they found a small notice pinned to the doors saying the Congress was cancelled...
...One of my cell mates, whom I will call K, had a particularly dramatic story...
...I live close to a senior Solidarity adviser, and he had been visited by the Milicja, Saturday night...
...On my way back, in the town center, I saw a few leaflets on walls...
...63 "No, I don't want to go here alone, I want to stay with the men...
...67 I recognized, since he had often searched my home in the past...
...It illustrated for us, rather amusingly, the priestly understanding of female needs, perhaps knowing that we needed these things but not quite sure for what, how often, or how many...
...I said I was a secretary of the PZPR and asked them if there was any mistake...
...Language classes were formed in English, French, and German, and there were lectures on history, social psychology, and a few amateur evenings of poetry and drama readings and recitals...
...He gave us the papal blessing...
...There were days when I was so frustrated I didn't even want to talk...
...You prepare in advance what you are going to say, get very tense, dress up specially, and try to put on a show of being normal and under control...
...and 7 A.M., and maybe he could shift things around a little...
...The main thing on my mind was that I was trying desperately to hold onto this huge pile of things I had been given because I knew it would make an awful noise if it fell on the floor, enough to wake the whole prison...
...Now that I have been released I don't know what to expect...
...The Red Cross brought us Swedish shampoo and other sanitary things, all stamped with the Red Cross symbol...
...I later learned that several National Commission delegates in Gdansk had received such information via their own monitoring services and from people in contact with them...
...The floor was dirty-gray linoleum...
...I refused and said that I couldn't sign his paper unless what I wrote, stating that I had never engaged in anti-state activities, was an integral part of it...
...Mieczyslaw F. Rakowski, a gifted political journalist, became editor of the relatively open-minded and liberal weekly Polityka in 1958—a position he held until his resignation in late 1982...
...When this manager had been taken the SB treated him well, making it clear they didn't really want to intern him, and that he could go free if he signed a paper saying he would desist from "anti-state activities...
...In the center stood a large wooden table and benches, and in one corner a curtain concealing a toilet, sink, and cold-water faucet...
...The interrogators asked the women from my cell all about me, and told them that I was a teacher...
...From the hospital we went straight to the prison...
...Its unswerving adherence to anti-Soviet attitudes has 70 tion in three months, and then we should have to start all over again...
...There were some commissioned talks on the history of the opposition movement, and if various rooms wanted these talks they could book speakers to come round to talk and answer questions...
...He had a small baby bundled up in his arms, which turned out in fact to be a three-year-old child...
...Two or three times we had an egg for supper...
...There were already many women there, from Fordon and Jaworze...
...As we set off, the ZOMO officer in charge told us where we were headed, that there would be no stops on the way, and he used a Polish idiom to encourage us to be quiet—he said, "You should be quiet because, remember, a peaceful calf can get milk from two cows...
...The place itself was formerly a holiday camp for highlevel employees of a state publishing company that owns all the street kiosks and distributes newspapers, etc...
...The child was left completely alone in the flat, a tiny one with a gas oven dangerously easy to light...
...This was five days after my arrest...
...The whole process of interrogating and interning new prisoners was so time-consuming that it would often be hours before an internee was transferred from his captors' quarters to the cells...
...The major 61 said, "Watch out if you're going home, and make sure there are no marks on your house since we know that Solidarity extremists have marked certain homes as containing people suitable for revenge actions...
...He said, "Mummy, you can't leave me, look, I've got a temperature...
...He sized me up and then asked me what kind of people had been interned in this camp...
...We had been allowed food parcels from our families after a while, and while we were pleased with this, since we could be independent of the prison's margarine, on the other hand we often felt very awkward upon opening the parcel and finding butter (or something else rationed), since we knew someone had sacrificed a month's rations for us...
...We played with the snow in the yard, making Jaruzelski snowmen to throw snowballs at, writing slogans on the walls with the snow...
...When we went into the Voivodship committee base we said, "Look, we're not children, we've come here of our own volition, and what we want from you is information that will help us to be in a position where we can protect the university from any unnecessary violence...
...Like Hannah herself, he has been arrested on many occasions by the SB...
...On the way there was in fact one stop, at a camp where they were keeping women, since there was one girl among us...
...We drove to Mostowski's palace, the main HQ of the SB in Warsaw, where I was left standing for ages on a huge staircase...
...But the people in charge didn't really know how to handle this mass of women and right from the start there was a constant flow between rooms and floors...
...they called us out and we collected our things, which had been removed the night before...
...The second interview, with a woman worker at a senior level inside Solidarity's Warsaw branch, is understated and low-key, and may stand as representative of many other persons' experiences during the first few months of military rule...
...As we left the trucks the sense of emptiness was overwhelming...
...In another room there were about 10 people of the leadership of NZS.6 There was some in-fighting between the two groups, and a splinter group was leaving as we entered...
...The person dealing with me seemed to be very confused and disturbed, and dealt with me very softly...
...At the party headquarters they had left us in no doubt about this "pacification...
...This was a complete contradiction, since what I wrote was, "I accuse you of martial law and state that you must accept all responsibility for all its effects, now and in the future...
...None of the students wanted to make an immediate street protest...
...So we had the uncomfortable task of organizing the first few hours of life under military rule...
...About 6 A.M...
...It wasn't a question of trusting or not trusting this information but observing the expectations and aims they had in mind...
...We tried hard to learn each other's specific problems and language, and this was a fantastically useful exchange...
...These students said that they had no intention of stopping their protest action...
...Afterward we returned to the student hostel, where there was a gathering of students, about 20 to 30...
...I had learned during the day that so far there had been no strikes in our city, so it was quite possible that the picture they presented for us was credible...
...The first to be taken from our cell was told by him that various ministries had started martial law but now it was totally under the control of WRON...
...Our intervention concerning the internees from the university was, shall we say, nervously rejected as being wrongly addressed...
...This admission of political impotence was later contradicted by a friend of mine who that same day was at a hospital in the city...
...It's not a factory where barricades can be erected...
...He was serving a heavy sentence for some serious crime, and prison was normal for B Wujek is a mine where eight workers were killed on December 17, 1981, after the institution of martial law, by government troops...
...of elements threatening the very existence of Solidarity...
...we played chess and then had a 30 minutes' walk...
...and we were given pea soup...
...We offered political guarantees for that man...
...come clear...
...I insisted that the students do everything they could to discover what was happening in the factories, since that was the only concrete form of action we could take—to try and gather information and contact people in danger...
...These leaflets had been printed at Ursus, at 3 A.M...
...With me at the time were a couple of friends...
...They couldn't make him sign it so they jailed him...
...The warder pushed me inside and said, "A place must be found for this one too...
Vol. 30 • January 1983 • No. 1
