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Aleksander Smolar - My father comes to my defense (19/201)

218 views · Published 17 December 2018 · 2:38 · Indexed 16 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’ll mention one more fact. In the '60s, he was dismissed from his position of head of the TSKŻ, and also later in ’67 as editor-in-chief of the Jewish newspaper 'Folks Sztyme' at the time of the Six-Day War in Israel because that newspaper held back from making any outspoken attacks on Israel.  They were trying to show not that they were openly pro-Israel but rather the complexity of the situation. They were forced to publish official condemnatory documents etc. He was later expelled from the Party. And then, finally… this fact is, in my opinion fairly characteristic for his generation and of the mentality of the old communists, when I was imprisoned in ’68 and my brother found himself in jail, too, my father wrote a dramatic letter to Gomułka. A dramatic letter to Gomułka which someone later in the 90s retrieved from the archives and gave to me. It really is a very moving letter. He writes recalling that he once wrote to Lenin and what sort of response he received, and that now he’s writing to a Party leader for the second time as both his sons are in prison, his daughter-in-law is in prison – my brother’s wife had been jailed – and that he’s simply requesting that they be released and that he himself is ready to leave Poland, if that were to be a condition of our release. He had a very dramatic outlook which had been shaped by the Soviet Union. To be honest, he was deeply convinced that we’d never leave prison which for me was totally absurd. I mean, the PPR was of course an unpleasant, authoritarian place although it’s hard to say it was totalitarian then. But to be honest, I was never afraid that they’d do something to me. I didn’t know how long I’d be in prison for. I stayed there for a year. To be honest, I’d expected to be there much longer than that, but even so. However, he had an apocalyptic vision meaning that these old-style communists were fascinated and dedicated on the one hand while on the other, they knew that this was a monster that would devour human lives; he had no illusions about that. After all, he had enough friends and acquaintances to know this.

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