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Aleksander Smolar - Recalling Antoni Macierewicz and elements of life in prison (126/201)

172 views · Published 20 December 2018 · 2:51 · Indexed 25 September 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: [VT] You knew, you had learned from home how in principle to behave in prison. Was this one of those principles?

It was obvious. It was obvious, I mean: don't give in, don't allow yourself to be guided by any misconception that the interrogating officer is not your enemy, the policeman is not your enemy. Even if ordinarily he is your opponent, now he has become your enemy. He wants to destroy you, that's obvious – you are fighting for years of life, for your dignity. That, of course, is how it is. Of course that's how it is which also means that prison is part of life. I mean, our parents spent so many years, so many years of their life [in prison] and then our generation paradoxically, but for much shorter periods, there was no comparison. Well, we, too… they had communism, an organisation that co-ordinated protests. We, of course, we had no organisation but we had a way of communicating through the window or sometimes we'd knock on the wall or another way of communicating that I used with someone who today is very well known and who is in the camp opposing mine – Antoni Macierewicz who is today one of the most malevolent members of the present government if not the most hostile. He's the Minister of National Defence and his views today are those of the radical right. Back then, he was an extreme… he was a proponent of guevarism meaning he was in favour of urban guerrilla warfare. He studied… he later attended seminars on Latin America given by the well-known historian Łepkowski. His passion for Latin America was linked to the Latin forms of the resistance movement. Then later in 'Aneks' he wrote… we published a section, maybe I ought to say something about 'Aneks' – a section about the relations between the Church and the opposition. This whole section was prepared in Poland and largely inspired by Adam Michnik whose article was published under the pseudonym, Korybut. When Adam was allowed to visit the West for the first time, I asked him, 'Was this written by you?' 'No way, it's far too left-wing for me. It was written by Antoni Macierewicz'. At that point he was still… those were… that was the end of the '70s. He was very left-wing and he condemned and criticised the opposition for looking to the Church for protection. Today, he doesn't leave the offices of Fr Rydzyk so he's in there with the extreme forces of the Church.

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