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Called to the dock again

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I am remanded in custody
Jan Józef Lipski Social activist
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I was arrested and I found myself in Mokotów again. In the changing room they greeted me I wouldn't say joyfully but in any case with a degree of surprise, ‘What – they've brought you here again?’ The prison warders were also surprised to see me because they thought I wouldn't come back. So a new prison term started and after a while, I found myself in hospital – in the Institute of Cardiology in Anin – with two guards outside my door. The guards tried to check up on me in the night to make sure that I wasn't up to something, maybe I was knotting my sheets together to make a rope or something, and so they'd come into my cell... sorry, into my hospital room every hour, but when I spoke the following day with the doctor on the ward and said that I'll never get better since I don't sleep at night because after I've been checked up on, for the first 30 minutes I can't get back to sleep and then for the next 30 minutes I'm lying there waiting for them to come and check up on me again, so then the doctor, following the rather peremptory intervention of the hospital management, allowed me to get my sleep.

Zostałem aresztowany... znalazłem się znowu na Mokotowie, w przebieralni powitali mnie, trudno powiedzieć, że radośnie, tylko... ale w każdym razie z takim pewnym zdziwieniem: „Co to, Pana znowu tutaj przywieźli?”. Klawisze witali mnie również z takim zdziwieniem, bo myśleli, że nie wrócę już. I... zaczęła się nowa tura odsiadki, gdzie po pewnym czasie znalazłem się w szpitalu, w Instytucie Kardiologii w Aninie z dwoma strażnikami pod drzwiami. Strażnicy próbowali w nocy sprawdzać, czy ja... no, czegoś złego nie robię – może skręcam sznury z prześcieradeł, może co – i co godzinę mi zaglądali do celi... przepraszam, do pokoju szpitalnego, ale kiedy interweniowałem na sali już u lekarza, że tutaj ja nie dojdę do zdrowia, jeżeli ja w ogóle w nocy nie śpię, bo jeżeli już mnie sprawdzono, to ja przez pierwsze pół godziny nie mogę usnąć, a przez następne pół godziny czekam na następną kontrolę. No i... rzeczywiście... na skutek zdaje się, że chyba ostrej interwencji dyrekcji szpitala pozwolili mi normalnie spać.

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: 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: Mokotów, Institute of Cardiology in Anin

Duration: 1 minute, 48 seconds

Date story recorded: October 1989

Date story went live: 14 March 2011