ianek70
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?