The Anniversary of Martial Law

13.12.05, 16:25
I remember it from the telly.
I was only a young boy, but a lot of the TV pictures stuck in my mind - the
water cannon fired on people outside a church, knocking over an old woman
falling with her shopping bags. The armoured cars and ZOMO uniforms,
especially the weird helmets.
It was a long, cold winter that year, and that's why so many people from
Western Europe still associate Poland with snow. It was on the news every day
for months - sometimes strikers, sometimes tanks, sometimes empty streets,
but always snow.

I was only a young boy, and at that time there were British strikes and riots
on TV every night, and bigger and better armoured cars were being set on fire
50km away in Belfast. But martial law still seemed to me like heavy shit, and
our school collecting chocolate for Polish children seemed weird to most of
us.

For most of my 11 years in Poland I've lived near the Wujek mine, I pass the
monument almost every day. Everybody here has stories about what they were
doing that December, but most just say now that life's hard, shit happens...

What do others remember?
    • bartis_ervin Re: The Anniversary of Martial Law 13.12.05, 20:24

      All I remember is my parents locking the door, closing the kitchen door, sitting
      in the corner and listening to Radio Free Europe. (I grew up in Romania and
      there it things were the same fucked up). I was only four years old, but I
      remember they were telling me that in a country, which is not so far and which
      they visited, there are big problems. And this country is called "Lengyelorszag"
      (Poland in Hungarian).

      Ervin

      Thebartiski.blogspot.com
    • ms.jones Re: The Anniversary of Martial Law 14.12.05, 00:28
      I was studying, we were on strike - groups of students taking turns to occupy
      the university building and having a good time actually. Our 'shift' ended in
      the afternoon and the three of us went round a friend's place and stayed the
      night there. In the morning someone noticed the phone wasn't working. We didn't
      twig what was going on until someone put the radio on with creepy fuerial
      music, likewise on the telly (I think)and then solemn Jaruzelski came on and
      made his speech. I remember sitting there in front of TV in stunned silence,
      trying to take it all in and then pondering about things that might happen.
      Brr..
      • varsovian Re: The Anniversary of Martial Law 15.12.05, 13:55
        With me it was the sense of shock and disappointment.
        I'd had nothing but good experiences with Poles, and had some Polish relations
        too.
        The other kids at school seemed wholly ignorant of it though.
        The Solidarity movement fired my interest in Poland.
        It also gave me valuable general knowledge - at least my girlfriend didn't have
        to explain to me what Zomo was when we were confronted by them at a Warsaw
        University demonstration in 1988.
    • nasza_maggie Re: The Anniversary of Martial Law 16.12.05, 14:18
      There was a fantastic documentary/propaganda on Martial Law last night on Kino
      Polska (I love that channel).
      Interesting to hear why Poland is identified with snow so much!
      No more winters like that here, eh?

      I have veeeeeery foggy memories of that time. I remember the curfew and the
      conspiracy to avoid it.
    • varsovian Re: The Anniversary of Martial Law 21.12.05, 12:10
      A dissident acquaintance of mine (a public figure so I won't name him)
      obviously got raided for incriminating evidence.
      Well, his wife had always complained about the self-built house, particularly
      the tiny cellar with even tinier entrance. While the milicja were searching the
      house, his wife directed the fattest milicjant towards the cellar and waited
      for events to unfold ... the fatso inevitably got stuck and it took the others
      half an hour to pull him out!
      My father-in-law was arrested by soldiers even though he was smallfry. He was a
      headmaster (school principal), but got demoted to classroom teacher and
      replaced by his deputy, who was a loyal party member. Nevertheless, every cloud
      has a silver lining - the new headmaster died of a heart attack, and my FIL cut
      his workload and has, by the skin of his teeth, pulled through a series of
      strokes that by rights should have either killed him or left him a vegetable.
      Losing his job saved his life as surely as it killed his successor.
      • ianek70 Re: The Anniversary of Martial Law 21.12.05, 14:20
        My daughter's Grandpa was working at the Wujek mine at the time, although he
        never talks about the strike or "incidents" as Poles call anything interesting
        that happened between 1946 and 1989. The March Incidents, the August
        Incidents...
        Gran never mentions the shootings either, but she stood at the gates every day
        with trays and bags of sandwiches for the strikers (bread was no problem for a
        miner's wife).
        "It was freezing and never a day went by when I didn't slip and fall on my
        arse."
        I saw the film "Natural Born Killers" in the cinema of Wujek's Dom Kultury, in
        the middle of another snowy cold winter, and afterwards instead of mini-skirted
        popcorn sellers in the foyer there was an exhibition, gathering dust, dented
        miners' helmets, militia uniforms, spent bullets and photos of tanks and graves.
        Friends remember stopping their game of hockey as children, and standing in the
        snow counting the ambulances that passed.
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