Well we started going around the country with simple humanitarian assistance. Just to support these people [workers and others suppressed during the 1976 protests against rising prices, particularly in the areas of Ursus and Radom], you know. This began, I think, even in July, there was this trial of workers from Ursus, and our observers attended it. And it was there where the first contacts were made with the families of those workers. At the same time – these were mostly people who never had any run-ins with the courts, with any criminal past, they knew nothing about these things, and they were completely helpless in the face of the machinery of coercion in Poland. So, they did not know such things, as what is a defense attorney, where you get one, how do you apply for a food parcel, for mail [privileges of prisoners to send and receive mail], for a jailhouse visit – they were entirely helpless in this whole context.
So at this juncture our colleagues took this on, and then started taking care of them in that regard. We started traveling around somewhat later, because this is really going on since July – oh, one other thing – you also have to have money if you are going to be doing this right – so the first collections were now taken up. At the same time, the authorities undertook this huge propaganda campaign, denouncing “the troublemakers of Ursus and Radom” [locations of the most intense 1976 protests against rising prices in Poland]. Despite that, and at this point in time they were no longer able to convince society at large that the nature of these actions … that these actions which were taken were anti-socialist, so to speak, or anti-state. Everyone really empathized and identified with these workers, and, for instance, when I was conducting a collection at my Physics Institute – everybody gave – even our party secretary gave, contributed to the cause of those people.
But as to KOR [The Workers’ Defense Committee (KOR) was an anticommunist underground civil society organization in the 1970s, formed to provide assistance to laborers and others persecuted by the government], that was not in existence yet. This was a huge problem of ours, because we were traveling around with this assistance, meeting with people, and yet we had nothing to say in the way of “who am I with, what do I represent? What is my reason for showing up here?” And this was very important to us, to create some format, or structure, of people of a known quantity. So the KOR, which was created on September 23, 1976, this became some kind of franchise for us – that now I am not here collecting money perhaps for myself, but that here is an organization which collects money, and organizes this whole thing – so this was critically important to us.
But one other important thing – in order to start traveling around, you have to commit yourself that this is what you are going to do – and so I remember having this conversation with my wife – I think we had a total of two such conversations over time. These days we might give it a sophisticated name like, “risk management,” but what it was, was a conversation along the lines of, “well if they catch us, you can get three years [in prison] for this . Are we ready for this, or are we not?” So we had to make a decision that we were ready, and then the whole thing became straightforward. The second time we had [a conversation like that], was under martial law when we were opening up Radio Solidarity, but then the discussion was not about three years anymore, but 10 years – because we calculated that this thing merited up to 10. One thing we did not believe was that they would give us the death penalty – although that is how the Declaration of Martial Law actually read. But people did have this kind of conversation. [Martial law in Poland was declared from December 1981-July 1983 by the military government of General Wojciech Jaruzelski in an attempt to crush political opposition. Thousands of opposition activists were jailed without being charged. Radio Solidarity was an underground radio station of the Solidarity resistance movement, broadcasting in Poland from the period of the martial law to the fall of the communist regime.]
Zbigniew Romaszewski and his wife, Zofia Romaszewska, were born in 1940 in Warsaw, Poland. Growing up during World War II and the Soviet Union’s subjugation of Eastern Europe, the couple became opponents of Poland’s communist regime and activists in various democratic opposition movements.
As children, Zbigniew and Zofia witnessed the horrors of World War II. Zbigniew and his family were sent to concentration camps, where his father died. After the war, he was raised by his mother and aunt. Zofia’s parents were part of Poland’s Home Army, an underground resistance movement against the Nazi occupation.
Zbigniew and Zofia both studied physics at the University of Warsaw. In the 1970s, following protests over rising prices by workers in the cities of Radom and Ursus, they helped to create the Workers’ Defense Committee (KOR), an organization that provided monetary and material support to persecuted laborers and their families. In addition, KOR documented human rights violations committed by the regime. Zbigniew also served as a principal editor for the Madrid Report, a detailed account of human rights violations in Poland that was released during the 1980 review meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (then known as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe).
In 1980, worker strikes at Gdansk’s Lenin Shipyard led to the formation of Solidarity, the first independent labor union in the communist world. The movement inspired millions within Poland and transformed into a nationwide freedom movement. Zbigniew and Zofia joined Solidarity and became active members. In December 1981, the government declared martial law in an effort to crackdown on political opposition. During this time the Romaszewskis went into hiding and established Radio Solidarity, an underground radio station that broadcast independent news and information to Polish citizens until the communist regime fell.
In communism’s final days, Zbigniew was elected to the Senate as an independent candidate in the semi-free elections of 1989. The next year, Lech Walesa was elected as the country’s first post-communist president and the first fully free parliamentary elections were held in 1991. Zbigniew served in the Polish Senate through much of the following two decades, including as the deputy speaker from 2007 – 2011.
Zbigniew Romaszewski passed away on February 13, 2014.
Poland is a central European country bordered by the Baltic Sea, Belarus, Ukraine, Germany, Russia, Lithuania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Poland has a population of 38 million people; nearly 90 percent are Roman Catholic.
Poles struggled against foreign dominance from the 14th century and the modern Polish state is less than one hundred years old. Polish borders expanded and contracted through a series of partitions in the 18th century. After a brief period of independence and parliamentary democracy from 1918 to 1939, World War II brought occupation by Nazi Germany and the near annihilation of the Jewish population. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Poland’s Jewish population went from over 3 million in 1933 to 45,000 in 1950.
After the war, Poland became a Soviet satellite state and a communist system was imposed. Farms were collectivized, basic freedoms curtailed, and a culture of fear developed under a Stalinist regime. The 1960s brought greater prosperity and some liberalization. Labor protests in the early 1970s tested the communist government’s resolve and prompted modest reforms.
In 1978, Polish Archbishop and Cardinal Karol Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian to hold the position since the 16th century. The pope’s triumphant return to Poland in 1979 saw massive outpourings of public support, shaking the foundations of the government and inspiring the opposition to press for peaceful change.
In 1980, shipbuilders in the seaport city of Gdansk united to confront the government. Their calls for greater political liberties and improved working conditions developed into the Solidarity movement. Solidarity’s leader, Lech Walesa, became the movement’s voice. Protests and unrest spread throughout the country and the communists replaced their leadership. General Wojciech Jaruzelski became prime minister and declared martial law on December 13, 1981. Solidarity was outlawed and Walesa and other Solidarity leaders were imprisoned.
While martial law was lifted in 1983, Poland continued to stagnate. Mikhail Gorbachev’s elevation to leadership of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985 brought new pressures for reform in Poland. A failing economy and continued repression incited workers to a new wave of strikes in 1988. A desperate regime agreed to legalize Solidarity and conduct semi-free elections. In the 1989 parliamentary elections, Solidarity won 99 of the 100 Senate seats and 160 of the 161 lower house seats they were allowed to contest. Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a Solidarity leader, became Poland’s first non-communist prime minister in over four decades. In 1990, Lech Walesa was elected president with 74 percent of the vote. While Solidarity splintered as Poland democratized, a coalition government of anti-communist parties won fully free parliamentary elections in 1991.
Poland transitioned to a market economy and applied for integration into western institutions. Economic dislocation returned the former communists, now social democrats, to power in 1993. Free elections and peaceful transitions in the following decades solidified Poland’s multi-party democratic system. Reforms eventually led to a more robust economy and Poland joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1999 and the European Union in 2004.
In Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2013, Poland earned the status “Free,” (as it has since 1990) receiving the best possible rankings in the categories Political Rights and Civil Liberties.
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