a story lives forever
Register
Sign in
Form submission failed!

Stay signed in

Recover your password?
Register
Form submission failed!

Web of Stories Ltd would like to keep you informed about our products and services.

Please tick here if you would like us to keep you informed about our products and services.

I have read and accepted the Terms & Conditions.

Please note: Your email and any private information provided at registration will not be passed on to other individuals or organisations without your specific approval.

Video URL

You must be registered to use this feature. Sign in or register.

NEXT STORY

The Radom trials

RELATED STORIES

Co-operation with Radio Free Europe
Jacek Kuroń Social activist
Comments (0) Please sign in or register to add comments

After three months, I was discharged from the army. I returned to Warsaw an this is what happened. I was missing Gaja terribly, I hadn't seen her for a very long time. I didn't realise I was stepping right into the maelstrom of this whole KOR activity. I was thinking that I need to come up with an idea on how to do this so that Gajka and I could work together and run KOR but at that point, I didn't have any ideas and the idea of the Information Office, Information Centre, thanks to which my name went down in Polish history, came about accidentally. Radio Free Europe, which was incredibly important to us, because our announcements had a very limited range, only as far as we'd been allocated, whereas the whole of Poland needed to be told. So we, the radio was transmitting the same announcement all the time together with the founding declaration. There'd be an announcement and then a word about repressions and then some information about how much money had been collected because the people - oh, the committee was very necessary in order to collect money, because the method of collecting from friends which had been very efficient, now that the scale was much bigger, it was incredible, it turned out to be inadequate and we began to run out of money. This needed to be announced, the word had to be put around. And putting the word around released a river of money, an enormous river of money relative to our needs, of course. So then I said, there's no other way around it - oh, and then someone told me about this call box on Plac Zbawiciela from which people were able to ring the West for just one złoty. It wasn't the one złoty that mattered but to be able to do this covertly. So three of us went, I remember: Gaja, I and Artek Libera, we all went to the place where the phone was, we rang but each time someone came past, I'd break off. I was calling Alik Smolar, someone came out, another person was passing by, we kept breaking off, people were going into the cafe next door and were coming out. I only had one thought in my head: that they'll catch me here and lock me away for non-payment of several hundred złoties, and that really bugged me that I'd have an ordinary, criminal trial. Suddenly I thought to myself, to hell with it, let's go. We came back home from where I rang Alik because as it turned out, what I'd told him before hadn't got recorded anyway. I dictated all the latest bulletins and did all of this from home. Following up on this, I started inviting journalists and in the meantime I gave the money we had collected to some KOR activists, there were thousands of them, all undercover. The people who were going to Radom or Ursus were undercover.

Zwolniono mnie z tego wojska po upływie trzech miesięcy. Przyjechałem do Warszawy i to była taka historia. Ja jechałem niesłychanie stęskniony za Gajką, strasznie długo jej nie widziałem znowu... znowu. Nie wiedziałem, że idę w dziki młyn tej całej KOR-owskiej działalności. Tak myślałem, że trzeba by sobie wymyślić pomysł jak to działać, tak żebyśmy mogli razem z Gajką działać i robić KOR, ale w tym momencie tego pomysłu nie miałem. Pomysł Biura Informacyjnego, Ośrodka Informacyjnego, który... właściwie w który wszedłem do historii, można powiedzieć, Polski jest... zrodził się przypadkowo. Po prostu radio "Wolna Europa", która miał dla nas niesłychane znaczenie przecież, bo komunikaty miały mały zasięg, tyle ile go tam przepisano, a tu trzeba było, żeby wiedziała Polska. Więc żeśmy... a w tym radiu szedł pierwszy komunikat wciąż i deklaracja założycielska, pierwszy komunikat i trochę o represjach i parę takich tam... i informacji o tym, ile zebrano pieniędzy, bo ludzie... oj, co to komitet jeszcze był potrzebny bardzo po to, żeby zbierać pieniądze, bo ta metoda zbierania pieniędzy po znajomych, która świetnie dotąd zdawała egzamin, teraz kiedy skala potrzeb zrobiła się taka duża, była niesłychanie, okazała się po prostu za krótka, no, zaczynało brakować pieniędzy. Trzeba było to ogłosić, rzucić hasło. I rzeczywiście rzucenie hasła dało olbrzymią rzekę pieniędzy, olbrzymią rzekę pieniędzy, jak na te nasze potrzeby oczywiście. No i wtedy mówię: nie ma innego wyjścia. Aha, ktoś mi powiedział, że jest taki automat przy placu Zbawiciela, z którego można zadzwonić na Zachód bez... za jedną złotówkę. Tu nie chodziło o jedną złotówkę, tylko o to, żeby tajnie to uczynić. No to poszliśmy w trójkę pamiętam: Gajka, ja i Artek Libera poszliśmy do tej bramy, dzwoniliśmy, ktoś przechodził, ja przerywałem. Dzwoniłem do Alika Smolara i ktoś wychodził, ktoś przechodził, żeśmy przerywali, chodzili obok do kawiarni, wracali. Ja cały czas myślałem o jednym, że oni mnie tu złapią i posadzą mnie za nadużycie iluś tam set złotych i to mnie strasznie piekło, że będę miał zwykły i kryminalny proces. I nagle se myślę: chromolę, jedziemy. Pojechaliśmy do domu do mnie i ja z domu zadzwoniłem do Alika, które się zresztą okazało, że tamto z tego automatu się w ogóle nie nagrało. I na... przedyktowałem mu... wszystkie ostatnie komunikaty i wszystko z domu. Jak tak to już zaraz następnie zacząłem zapraszać dziennikarzy i równocześnie rozdałem wszystkim współpracownikom KOR-u, a była ich rzesza i byli oni wszyscy bardzo ukryci. Ci ludzie, którzy jeździli do Radomia i do Ursusa byli tajni.

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: Marcel Łoziński Jacek Petrycki

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.

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.

Tags: Warsaw, KOR, Information Office, Information Centre, Radio Free Europe, Poland, Plac Zbawiciela, Radom, Ursus, Gaja Kuroń, Artur Libera, Alik Smolar

Duration: 3 minutes, 14 seconds

Date story recorded: 1987

Date story went live: 12 June 2008