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I wanted to be a revolutionary

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My father moves to Lwów
Jacek Kuroń Social activist
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The story of how my father came to be in Lwów is also very funny. He was, and this is a story which links in with Solidarność, namely, I used to travel to the coalmines in Silesia, in Zagłębie, to hold meetings with the coalminers about free Saturdays. The point was for them to work eight free Saturdays as a gift to the nation, Solidarność had called for these eight free Saturdays and so the mining commission was going to decide but first, we needed to talk with the miners so that the whole crew would be in agreement. All of us, all of the Solidarność bosses travelled to these places. Wałęsa went, Lis went and so did others including me. So I arrived at the Zawadzki coalmine in Sosnowiec and I realised that it reminded me of something. I asked the director what was the name of this coalmine before the war. He says, 'Reden'. And is there a shaft here called Paris? There is. So then we had the meeting, it was a huge rally held in one of the rooms they called a dividing room, where part of the team went down so those who were going down to the pits came in dressed and wearing their lamps, you know how, and then the others came up. So that's when the two shifts met and I spoke to them both and there was a bit of a barney, a discussion, they wanted to beat me up in that Reden. And there were questions. Some guy lept up, he must have been a Party member, and says to me, 'Perhaps you could tell us something about your parents, about what they did in life'. I don't know, he probably thought I was Michnik. So I said to him, 'Yes, I'll gladly tell you. Before the war, in '23-'24, my daddy worked in this Reden coalmine in the Paris shaft where he was the assistant to the engineer'. It was in this Paris coalmine after '20, because my daddy had been a volunteer and when he was 15 years old, he'd sent his friend in to take his place while he volunteered to go and fight on the front in '20. He left for the front with a copy of The Trilogy in his knapsack, and he was volunteered to be part of the execution squad at the Citadel in Żolibórz. He executed deserters right opposite our house. I think this scarred him for life. The things that he told me about '20, the things my daddy said about '20 is Babel except from the other side. After all, Babel was his favourite, one of his three favourite books, The Good Soldier Svejk being another and Pan Tadeusz being the third. He read these three books over and over. So you can get quite a good picture of my daddy from these three books. I'll say more about that in a moment.

Let's go back to that pit, because I haven't lost anything, let's go back to that pit, Paris, where my daddy's working. When he returned from the war, he began to work as the engineer's assistant before which he took his graduation exams and then went to work there. One of the machines broke down and an expert came over from France to fix it because the owners were Frenchmen and they wouldn't allow any Pole to touch the machines. He took it apart, put it together, took it apart, put it together again. My father said, 'I blew into one of the pipes and saw that it was blocked'. There was grease inside and it had blocked the pipe. So then he said, 'What if I fix this machine?' And that's what he did. He pushed through the grease, saying nothing, just told them to leave him on his own, pushed through the grease, warmed it up, put everything back together and they gave him 2000 złoties and a grant to study in the Lwów polytechnic. So daddy went to Lwów where he seduced my mother and that's how I came to be born.

A jak się mój tata wziął we Lwowie, to też bardzo śmieszna historia. On był... i to jest historia, która ma taki zapląt w Solidarność, mianowicie jeździłem po kopalniach po Śląsku, po Zagłębiu, na spotkania z górnikami w sprawie tych wolnych sobót, chodziło o to żeby przepracować osiem wolnych sobót, ojczyźnie w darze. Solidarność wezwała do ośmiu wolnych sobót i w związku z tym miała być decyzja komisji górniczej i trzeba było przedtem rozmawiać z górnikami żeby była zgoda załogi. Myśmy wszyscy, całe kierownictwo Solidarności jeździło po tych zakładach. No Wałęsa tam jeździł, Lis, inni i ja między innymi jeździłem. I przyjechałem ja ci do kopalni Zawadzki w Sosnowcu, tak coś czuję, coś mi się to kojarzy. Pytam tego dyrektora jak się ta kopalnia przed wojną nazywała. Mówi: "Reden". "A jest tu szyb Paryż?" "Jest". No i po chwili jest ten wiec taki, to był taki wielki wiec w sali tak zwanej rozdziałowej, część załogi zjeżdżała, ci co mieli zjechać, wchodzili z lampkami ubrani, wiesz tego, a druga część wyjeżdżała. I wtedy spotykały się dwie zmiany i do tych dwóch zmian ja przemawiałem i odbywała się pyskówa, dyskusja, pobić mnie tam chcieli na tym Redenie. No i pytania. I do nas się zrywa jakiś facet, musi partyjny i mówi: "No a może by nam Pan coś o swoich rodzicach powie, co oni tak robili w życiu?" Nie wiem, pewnie mnie wziął za Michnika, jak rozumiem. A na to ja mówię: A tak to mogę chętnie odpowiedzieć. Otóż mój tatuś przed wojną w dwudziestym trzecim, czwartym roku pracował tu na kopalni Reden na szybie Paryż jako pomocnik maszynisty, bo właśnie on na tej kopalni Paryż, już po dwudziestym roku, bo tatuś mój był ochotnikiem, jak miał 15 lat podstawił kolegę i poszedł na ochotnika na front, w dwudziestym roku. I zresztą poszedł na ten front z Trylogią w torbie i wyznaczono go jako ochotnika do plutonu egzekucyjnego, na Cytadeli na Żoliborzu, na wprost naszego domu rozwalał dezerterów. Co ja myślę, że zostawiło mu skazę na całe życie. To co on opowiadał o dwudziestym, mój tatuś opowiadał o dwudziestym roku to jest Babel, tylko z drugiej strony. Zresztą Babel był najukochańszym, jedną z trzech najukochańszych książek mego tatusia, drugą były Przygody dzielnego wojaka Szwejka, a trzecią Pan Tadeusz. Otóż te trzy książki czytał w koło. Tak właśnie już po tych trzech książkach widać mojego tatusia dość dobrze, o tym będzie jeszcze za chwilę. No i teraz wracamy do tego szybu, bo ja nic nie zgubiłem, do tego szybu Paryż, gdzie tatuś jest, jak wrócił z tej wojny zaczął pracować jako pomocnik maszynisty, przedtem zrobił maturę i poszedł tam pracować. Otóż, zepsuła się maszyna... zepsuła się maszyna i przyjechał fachowiec z Francji, bo właścicielem byli Francuzi i nie dawali tu żadnemu Polakowi dotknąć tej maszyny. On ją rozebrał, złożył, rozebrał, złożył, tata powiada dmuchnę w jedną rurkę i widzę, że nie przechodzi. Tam w środku był smar, zatkało rurkę. No to mówi: "A jeżeli ja naprawdę tą maszynę?" "To naprawiaj". I naprawił. Przedmuchał ten smar, nic powiedział, kazał się zostawić sam, przedmuchał ten smar, wypuścił, rozgrzał to, tego, zamontował i dano mu dwa tysiące złotych i stypendium na studia na Politechnice we Lwowie. I tatuś pojechał do Lwowa, gdzie właśnie uwiódł moją mamusię i tak ja się urodziłem.

The late Polish activist, Jacek Kuroń (1934-2004), had an influential but turbulent political career, helping transform the political landscape of Poland. He was expelled from the communist party, arrested and incarcerated. He was also instrumental in setting up the Workers' Defence Committee (KOR) and later became a Minister of Labour and Social Policy.

Listeners: Jacek Petrycki Marcel Łoziński

Cinematographer Jacek Petrycki was born in Poznań, Poland in 1948. He has worked extensively in Poland and throughout the world. His credits include, for Agniezka Holland, Provincial Actors (1979), Europe, Europe (1990), Shot in the Heart (2001) and Julie Walking Home (2002), for Krysztof Kieslowski numerous short films including Camera Buff (1980) and No End (1985). Other credits include Journey to the Sun (1998), directed by Jesim Ustaoglu, which won the Golden Camera 300 award at the International Film Camera Festival, Shooters (2000) and The Valley (1999), both directed by Dan Reed, Unforgiving (1993) and Betrayed (1995) by Clive Gordon both of which won the BAFTA for best factual photography. Jacek Petrycki is also a teacher and a filmmaker.

Film director Marcel Łoziński was born in Paris in 1940. He graduated from the Film Directing Department of the National School of Film, Television and Theatre in Łódź in 1971. In 1994, he was nominated for an American Academy Award and a European Film Academy Award for the documentary, 89 mm from Europe. Since 1995, he has been a member of the American Academy of Motion Picture Art and Science awarding Oscars. He lectured at the FEMIS film school and the School of Polish Culture of Warsaw University. He ran documentary film workshops in Marseilles. Marcel Łoziński currently lectures at Andrzej Wajda’s Master School for Film Directors. He also runs the Dragon Forum, a European documentary film workshop.

Tags: Lwów, Silesia, Sosnowiec, Lech Wałęsa, Adam Michnik

Duration: 3 minutes, 56 seconds

Date story recorded: 1987

Date story went live: 12 June 2008