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Jacek Kuroń - My first political choice (21/150)

4,209 views · Published 20 October 2017 · 3:26 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · News & Politics

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Polish activist Jacek Kuroń (1934-2004) helped to transform the political landscape of Poland. He was expelled from the communist party, arrested and incarcerated. He was also instrumental in setting up Workers' Defence Committee (KOR) and became a Minister of Labour and Social Policy. [Listener: Jacek Petrycki, Marcel Łoziński; date recorded: 1987]

TRANSCRIPT: I can recall my first political action from that time, too. Namely, I used to bring milk home for my brother, my brother was... he was just born and that milk had to be brought from somewhere beyond Lwów, they sorted that out that someone could go and pick this milk up and so I'd cross the whole of Lwów to get this milk. I used to carry this milk in a bottle which I always smashed, so my father equipped me with a metal can which I'd tie to my belt and I'd set off in the morning and bring the milk home in the evening. Schools were permanently closed because of the army, and they'd been made into hospitals. If there were tanks and transport vehicles in town, then we all knew the school would be closed. School didn't bother me at that point. So I was on my way across town and reached a point in the centre of town - well, kind of the centre, somewhere between Zielona Street, it was near Zielona, closer to Prus Place, Stryjska Street so nearer the outskirts of town. There was a big house there which was being built before the war, the steps were there and the bare walls and that's where I suddenly saw these local boys, dressed normally having a fight with some Hitlerjungen. My heart started pounding - this was what I'd been waiting for! I joined in the battle straight away fighting, of course, on the side of the boys I thought were Polish against the Germans. The battle raged but something started to seem a little suspicious because they seemed to be negotiating with representatives passing bewteen the two groups and the talks between them were a bit odd - I couldn't understand this. Then, as we were approaching the others, one says to me, one says, 'There's a reichsdeutsche spy here, I think it's him'. And he points at me. The others all knew one another but I didn't know any of them. So I flung myself at him yelling, 'You're the volksdeutsch! You're the volksdeutsch!' They were one and the same to me and suddenly they all fell silent, afraid. It turned out that a school of volksdeutsch kids was having a fight with kids from a reichsdeutsche school and that's why those others who were Germans who'd arrived from the Reich were wearing uniforms of the Hitlerjungen while those others were dressed normally like the poor kids of Lwów. So it turned out I was fighting the battle of the volksdeutsche on the side of the reichsdeutsche. This worried me a lot but I decided that I have to take part on this side, there's nowhere else to fight so I'll fight on this side. And this was my first political choice. Today, I know it was the wrong one - I should of course, have been fighting on the other side but tough. They had these sorts of conversations: 'My father, says one of them, my father gets more of that butter or white bread', because he was in a higher group - they had those groups there. 'But my father will go and he'll sort it out and he'll have it, too', because of something or other. That's how I came to know the volksdeutsche of Lwów, and then later on, I carried out a few executions when I met them individually, because of which they hated me with a volksdeutsche's hatred. Their school was on Kampian Street and mine... after that, I moved through Lwów as if it was wild territory because if they'd caught me, I'd have got a terrible beating - they used to hunt me down those volksdeutsche. I had a few incredible adventures because of that.

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