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Resistance spreads throughout Poland

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First significant success
Jan Józef Lipski Social activist
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These were new elements and a moment of our first genuine triumph. It wasn't just that we, who were locked up on Mokotów, were being released because you could say if we hadn't got ourselves banged up in the first place, we wouldn't have had the problem of being released, but along with us, they released those workers who had nine-year sentences. We hadn't expected that, this kind of success, everyone was very happy and a new period began, we changed our name to the KOR Social Self-help Committee. The three letters KOR [Komitet Obrony Robotników (Workers' Defence Committee)] were kept as a symbol testifying to the continuity, it was a broadening of our work. We were dealing with so many issues which had nothing to do with Radom and Ursus and so much harm done to other people, that we were of the opinion that we couldn't just leave this pretending we couldn't see what was happening since we'd only formed to deal with one narrow issue, while at the same time, this movement was growing all the time and getting stronger. Underground publications began to appear with the Biuletyn Informacyjny at the helm – the first one for years in Poland, for decades in Poland, the first uncensored, underground publication, made on duplicating machines, which had a wide circulation, we published 5000 copies. It was passed around from person to person. Each issue had an incomparably larger number of readers. And I have to say again, that again there were… as the author of a book about KOR I have to say that on occasion when I opened the pages to check something, I opened them with a weariness because that was four years of really hard struggle – here someone had been beaten up or even killed – we had to deal with situations like that as well – which weren't necessarily political, they didn't involve people who were essentially political, just people who weren't part of the mainstream, when the police who were either settling scores or wanted to show the power of their authority simply killed with impunity – people were killed, we had lots of cases like that. We began to fight against this but for the most part it was ineffective and really, we had this feeling that what we were doing lay somewhere between the function of a social worker and an official whose job it was to record all of this while at the same time, once a week or sometimes more often than that, we'd go to one or another detention centre in Poland for 48 hours. It's hard for me to say much more than this – it was arduous, daily, exhausting work in which anyone who was less physically resilient wasn't able to cope. It's enough if I say that it was at this time that I developed a heart defect which led to me having cardiac surgery in ‘78, but I was so exhausted… it began with me being so exhausted that I was barely able to get around, I was fit to drop.

To były jakieś nowe elementy i moment wielkiego, naszego pierwszego i prawdziwego zwycięstwa. To nie tylko to, że my, siedzący na Mokotowie, wychodzimy, bo można powiedzieć „trzeba się było nie pchać, to by nie było problemu, czy się wychodzi”, ale razem z nami wypuszczono również tych robotników, którzy mieli nawet wyroki dziewięciu lat więzienia. Tego się nie spodziewaliśmy, takiego sukcesu, to była wielka radość i zaczął się nowy okres, zmieniliśmy nazwę na Komitet Samoobrony Społecznej KOR. KOR – już pozostały tylko te trzy litery jako symbol świadczący o ciągłości, było to rozszerzenie zadań. Tyle spraw do nas przychodziło, które nie miały już nic wspólnego z Radomiem i Ursusem i tyle krzywdy ludzkiej, że byliśmy zdania, że nie wolno nam tego zostawić i udawać, że tego nie widzimy, bo zawiązaliśmy się tylko po to, żeby wąską sprawę załatwić, a jednocześnie ten ruch jakoś coraz bardziej się rozwijał, krzepł. No, zaczęły przede wszystkim wychodzić czasopisma podziemne z „Biuletynem Informacyjnym” na czele, pierwszy od lat w Polsce, od dziesiątków lat w Polsce, pierwsze powielane, niecenzurowane, podziemne pismo, które się dosyć szeroko rozchodziło, było wydawane w pięciu tysiącach... egzemplarzy. Szło to od ręki do ręki, każdy numer miał nieporównanie więcej czytelników. I znowu trzeba powiedzieć, że nastąpiły znowu...Ja, jako autor książki o KOR-ze, muszę powiedzieć, że czasami otwierając ją, żeby coś sprawdzić, otwieram ją ze znudzeniem, bo to były te cztery lata takiej żmudnej szarpaniny – tu kogoś pobito, tu kogoś nawet zabito, bo myśmy walczyli również z takimi wypadkami, które tyczyły niekoniecznie politycznych, nawet w zasadzie nie politycznych, tylko ludzi z marginesu, kiedy bezkarna milicja, mając czy porachunki, czy żeby pokazać moc swojej władzy, po prostu zabijała – ludzie byli zabijani, mieliśmy dziesiątki takich wypadków zarejestrowanych. Zaczęła się walka z tym, ale większość rzeczy to była taka strasznie nieefektowna i właściwie to tak... mieliśmy takie poczucie, że robimy coś pośredniego między funkcją opiekuna społecznego a...a funkcją urzędnika, który musi to wszystko rejestrować i jednocześnie tylko raz na tydzień, albo częściej, albo rzadziej, zależnie od momentu, idzie na 48 godzin to takiego czy innego aresztu w Polsce. I właściwie więcej trudno coś o tym opowiedzieć – to była taka żmudna, codzienna, wyczerpująca praca w której właściwie ludzie mniej wytrzymali fizycznie no...się trochę wykruszali. No, wystarczy powiedzieć, że u mnie w tym czasie się wada serca uczyniła, co się skończyło w ’78 roku operacją serca, ale po prostu byłem tak wyczerpany, że... że zaczęło się od tego... byłem tak wyczerpany, że ledwie no...chodziłem, ledwie podpierałem się nosem.

Jan Józef Lipski (1926-1991) was one of Poland's best known political activists. He was also a writer and a literary critic. As a soldier in the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), he fought in the Warsaw Uprising. In 1976, following worker protests, he co-founded the Workers' Defence Committee (KOR). His active opposition to Poland's communist authorities led to his arrest and imprisonment on several occasions. In 1987, he re-established and headed the Polish Socialist Party. Two years later, he was elected to the Polish Senate. He died in 1991 while still in office. For his significant work, Lipski was honoured with the Cross of the Valorous (Krzyż Walecznych), posthumously with the Grand Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1991) and with the highest Polish decoration, the Order of the White Eagle (2006).

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: Mokotów, KOR, Workers' Defence Committee, Social Self-help Committee, Radom, Ursus

Duration: 3 minutes, 38 seconds

Date story recorded: October 1989

Date story went live: 14 March 2011