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The events of December '70 seen from the perspective of prison

Jacek Kuroń - Social activist

Well, yes, but now I was faced with the prospect of prison. Throughout this whole time right up until my trial, which didn't happen until January '72, I was under the impression that I was going to be locked up for 15 years because that's what everyone was saying. I accepted that in order to get through that period, because that's the only way you can get through in prison, not to be waiting for the end because there isn't one. That's how it was. You're in prison for the length of time you know you're going to be there. Time stretches out ahead of you but there's no time behind you. This time exists in your own head, this is the time in prison. So at that point, I was in there for 15 years. I imagined that I would be old by the time I came out and so I'd have to get used to being old. And that lesson, it wasn't a lesson really, that adaptation, that perception of the fact that my youth had gone helped me enormously because later, I didn't have an issue with this at all, even to this day, because I went through it then. I spent a long time in Mokotów after which I was moved to Wronki where I stayed for the rest of my sentence. It's a very old Prussian prison. As always, I was locked up with criminals. There, you know in Wronki, it's all repeat offenders. I learned something there which few people ever have the chance to see from such close quarters: the lumpenproletariat so terribly dehumanised because usually the mother had been an alcoholic, as a child they'd been in a remand home, followed by prison, so their whole life had been a life sentence with the odd break. It was there that I lived through December '70. First, there was a news bulletin saying there had been disturbances by criminals which had been suppressed. The city had been restored to order said a news item in the paper and on the radio - that was one more curse of life in prison: the 'yapper', a loudspeaker that we were forced to listen to non-stop. However, on that occasion, it was a blessing because I could hear the bulletin about the riots and then that they had stopped, and then one night all night long we could hear the sound of footsteps and people were brought into our cell from other cells. This meant that they were bringing new prisoners to our prisons but we couldn't find out who. It's an old, brick-built, enormous Prussian prison with a central hall, several levels, walkways, nets, a central staircase, and everything was made of wood. So when people, all of whom were wearing clogs, were being brought down from other floors, because we were being squashed in all together, the whole prison would vibrate and shake and this went on all night. By the morning we'd already learned through coded messages that people from outside Gdańsk and from other prisons in the coastal region had been put on the top floor, and then the uniform store passed a message to us that people were being brought who'd been rounded up in Poznań. So we knew then that this unrest was very widespread. That same day we weren't let out to work, and the same day I was taken to see the nurse because there was something wrong with me. She was on the first floor and there through the window, I saw a tank positioned outside the prison, it was one of many that were surrounding the prison at that point, and I managed to see a bit of it. Straight after that came the speech by Cyrankiewicz, it was terrifying but it gave a clear picture of the whole nation being in flames. I listened to it in the same way I listened to the speech given in '56. It was equally terrifying. It felt as though we'd gone back in time. I had that sensation of going back in time on two occasions. Once when Irka Żyto came to my home in Żolibórz saying that on the Narutowicz Square, 8 March the students are shouting slogans, and then the police vans arrived, and then I had the feeling that we'd returned to '57. And now, as I was listening to Cyrankiewicz, I had the feeling that I was back in June '56 and felt as though this was the moment from which everything would surge forward... I wondered whether we'd be able to repeat '56 and I had the feeling that we would. I didn't realise what a great barrenness there was among the intellectuals. After that I kept my ear glued to the loudspeaker to hear what the intellectuals would have to say. Suddenly, I heard there was a meeting of the intellectuals, artists, various others, and they'd decided that we were going to rebuild the Castle. I realised this was the end. I was completely aware that if the intelligentsia does not join in, then it would progress no further. Soon after that we were released, before the end of our sentences again because Professor Lipiński had paid Gierek a visit and had told him that the account needed to be settled with March meaning that those who were still imprisoned need to be released, and the only ones who were still imprisoned were Karol and myself because the others had been released under the amnesty.

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