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Aleksander Smolar - My communist past creates problems (37/201)

196 views · Published 18 December 2018 · 2:19 · Indexed 19 October 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2018 · News & Politics

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To listen to more of Aleksander Smolar’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFwlxPLurqAOCrabBgGrqLA7

Aleksander Smolar (b. 1940) is a Polish writer, political activist and adviser, vice-president of the Institute for Human Sciences and president of the Stefan Batory Foundation. [Listener: Vitek Tracz]

TRANSCRIPT: I was meant to have gone to the States but the Americans refused to give me a visa. Why? Well, at that time, I had Jewish travel documents, as they were called, travel documents which were one way only. In Vienna, I went to the American Embassy and told them my whole life story and they gave me a form to fill in – it wasn’t very long; I remember perfectly point, paragraph 30, 31, 32 – I think I’ve got the numbers right. Paragraph 30 said: Are you/have you ever had – AIDS wasn’t around yet, so they listed venereal disease, syphilis? Have you ever been sent to prison? Have you committed a crime? Were you ever a Nazi? A fascist in a fascist movement? Were you a communist and so on. Paragraph 31: Can you answer ‘yes’ to any of the questions in the previous paragraph? Paragraph 32: Which question? So I wrote I was a member of the PZPR, a Party that was communist. After that, I was summoned by an official for a talk. He was very sympathetic towards me and said, ‘But, sir, you were forced, write that you were made to join’. I said, ‘No’. The emotions now… I won’t write this. So I didn’t go to America even though I had work waiting for me there. I was in a fairly specific situation. I can’t remember how, but I was taken on by a well-known economist who specialised in communist economies – David Granick. He was in Madison. It wasn’t cutting-edge, it wasn’t the best university, but I had employment there. And so I found myself out in the cold.

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