At the very immediate time after the communist collapse, the number one topic of conversation in this room, even before business, was everyone’s encounters with the Zomo (Polish secret police). It would emerge as the dominant theme as I met more and more members of Solidarity. Joanna Wojciechowicz was someone I met in Seattle after I had stopped traveling to Poland, but her account of the Zomo clearly defined who they were and will live in my mind and heart forever:
Joanna was an architect who worked for the city of Gdansk in the 1970’s. In other words, she worked for the government. December 14, 1970 was like any other cold day in communist Gdansk. She made her way to the bus which would bring her from her apartment that she shared with her son, (Mihou) and her abusive husband. Just trying to live life in communist Gdansk was very hard. I have a letter Joanna wrote to a friend describing how exhausting just eking out a living through the maze of rules and laws and lack of goods and resources had become: One time, during martial law, when a visiting Senator from the U.S. had come to Gdansk (she thought it had been Senator Hatch from Utah), she had shared the last of her bread with him, spread with lard and cut so thin that the lard made it seem transparent. This was all she had left, and didn’t know where she would get any more. But this was a typical condition from the time she could remember.
That December day, however, she finally got to work a little late. Once again, the electricity was out, which meant there were no lights, and more importantly, no elevator (a government building), and her office was on the top floor of the 5-story building. She climbed to the top just in time to see everyone looking out the windows. Her office overlooked the Lenin Shipyard, and everyone was there, watching the workers going on strike behind the gates. They were striking -- again -- for higher wages so they could afford meat. This was a useless effort, because as soon as everyone could afford meat, they'd buy up all the meat in Poland, and then there would be a shortage (supply) of meat, which would drive up the price of meat (demand), and everyone would be right back at this same point -- preparing to strike for higher wages so they could afford meat. She joined in looking out the windows with her co-workers out of curiosity, but then something unbelievable happened.
The workers opened the gates and began to march down the street with their signs and their chants. As she watched them parade by, she noticed one of the workers grab his upper arm, spin about, and collapse on the ground. Almost immediately, another worker seemed to fall back and down. Another grabbed his shoulder and hit the ground. It suddenly, and horrifyingly occurred to Joanna that these workers were being shot as they marched through the streets. Panic ensued, and all hell broke loose with tanks, helicopters, and the crack of gunfire.
Joanna’s desire was to get down to the street and help these wounded men immediately! As she ran down the stairs, she noticed one floor where their were helmeted figures crouched at a window. It was the Zomo: snipers who were picking the workers off one by one. This was why the electricity didn’t work! The Zomo were hiding in the darkened building where they had the greatest vantage point to the shipyard gates and streets. They were using Joanna’s building to ambush the unarmed men.
Not much is written about the ensuing massacre, but Joanna tells about how the taxi drivers served as ambulances that day, and crammed in as many of the wounded as possible and drove as fast as possible to all the nearby hospitals. They hurried as fast as they could all the while the smell and stickiness of blood filled up their cabs.
I have been to the Monument in Gdansk at the shipyard, and have seen the embedded broken bottles, sticks and stones that the workers fought back the tanks, automatic weapon fire, and helicopters with. I have seen the brass marker at the shipyard where a worker was crushed by a tank against the iron gate. I have seen the photos of the dead man on the door being marched through town as a martyr. I have a copy of a tape recording of the massacre as it unfolded that day.
The recorded sounds of the massacre are worse than pictures, because it is an additional sensation of almost being there. While there was a man who secretly filmed the massacre, another friend of Joanna’s had taped the sound, and she gave me a copy. It seems that the battle (one-sided massacre) lasted forever. You can hear the people scurrying away in the streets. You can hear the engines of the tanks as they roll by. You can hear the helicopters overhead punctuated by gunfire. But even worse, you can hear the whistle from the shipyard warning people to stay away from this place of death. It lasts for about 5 minutes until the man who is holding the whistle is shot, and the shrill sound abruptly stops. The massacre spread from Gdansk through Sopot and to Gdynia. It was massive and total.
Joanna recalled that after the massacre, all the families of anyone slain (including the families of a 3-year old girl, and a pregnant woman who was caught in the cross-fire), were rounded up in the middle of the night and shipped off to Siberia, never to be heard from again. I know this sounds like a scene from “Dr. Zivago,” but it’s exactly what happened. The official government word on the 1970 strike/massacre was that it never happened. Getting rid of all evidence was extremely important to the government, and deporting the families of the fallen was expedient in order to defend the lie that it never happened. The remaining people were not allowed to ever speak of it for fear of being deported to Siberia, or jailed, or admitted to a mental hospital. Instead, these people who witnessed it kept the horror deep in their hearts where it grew and swelled until it could no longer be contained. It was the beginning of Solidarity.
Joanna subsequently quit her job with the government, and opened a pottery shop, which she used as a front for the Gdansk Information Agency – a communications network for Solidarity. Then when the Monument was erected to the slain workers of 1970 (written 19t0), Joanna put together an exhibit of all the artifacts, art, and stories from the massacre for the people of Gdansk, Sopot, and Gdynia to come and pay homage to and remember those who were mowed down by powerful weapons of war.
Of course, I am re-telling this story in a very short form, but I want to illustrate the consequences of a subject that I had not only taken for granted, but had never really cared much about. Oh, I had thought a little about it when President Reagan was shot, but I had not analyzed the meaning of it until I went to the shipyard in Gdansk that cold, windy March day in 1990: Gun control and the Second Amendment.
(see: http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=December%201970%20Insurrection%20in%20Poland for more information – what little there is).
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