"We Are Here": Jewish Narratives of Poland's March 1968 Events

Leon Rozenbaum - Student, Warsaw

In the middle of March, a soldier from the regional military headquarters knocked on my door.  He had a summons for me to appear before a medical committee “for the purpose of re-reviewing my capability to fulfill my basic military service.” 

Because of my bad eyesight, I was “Category D” - “incapable of military service in peacetime.”  Just so I would have no doubts as to what the committee’s conclusion was going to be, the soldier also brought a draft card for the army and a train ticket to the military base in Mragow, in the Olsztyn voivodeship.

I was a second-year student in political economy at the University of Warsaw.  I had no way to find out what was going on.  It was Saturday or Sunday and the Dean’s office was closed. 

I decided to ask Professor Bobrowski, the Dean of my department.  He wasn’t at home.  So I came up with the idea to ask Professor Chrupko.  He was the First Secretary of the departmental Party organization and a pretty nice, decent person.  I went to his apartment.  At that moment he was having some kind of family party.  I apologized for interrupting.  He said it was no problem.  He spoke openly with me.  He said that they had gotten an order from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to expel Henryk Szlajfer[1] - he was a year ahead of me - but no one else.  And he said that my name, as far as he knew, hadn’t come up.

On Monday, I went to school.  I met up with some friends who had been to military exercises in Mragow.  They drew me a map of the base and marked down where all the holes in the perimeter fence were, and a female friend gave me the name of the worst thug in the disciplinary unit so that I could look out for him - otherwise, I might have a problem.

I was supposed to report to Mragow in under a week - about the 20th of March.

I went to the regional military headquarters.  It was in the military hospital on Grochowa Street.  They called us up two at a time.  I went in with Piotr.  We were asked one question:  what illnesses we had had.  Piotr started to list them, one by one.  Piotr was trying to say the full name and the doctor from the commission would interrupt him before the last syllable and ask him what was next.  Piotr listed a few dozen illnesses.  He named them in alphabetical order.  I wonder whether anyone besides me noticed that.  Probably not.  Of course, he got “Category C” [fit for service in peacetime].  Me too.  I listed out all my childhood illnesses, and they sent me to various specialists so that they could certify that I was fit for military services “in peacetime.”  The optometrist signed off without even examining me.  I understood that it wasn’t my vision that had improved, but rather my situation that had gotten worse.  I was capable of military service “with limitations.”

After a few days, a soldier from the regional military command knocked on my door once again and said that he was taking away my draft card.  He could barely move, he was completely drunk.  He was going from house to house, taking back draft cards, and everyone would offer him a drink out of happiness.  I think I was about his sixth client.  He drank, took the card, and left.

To this day, I don’t what that was really about.  There were supposed to be three penal camps: in Hrubieszow, Zagan, i Braniewo.  They had planned to form three penal battalions, one from each military zone, and fill them each with 500 students.  It’s likely they backed off from that plan for two reasons.  First, the police had arrested a larger number of students than planned.  And the rectors of Warsaw’s institutions of higher learning - with the exception of Stanislaw Turski from the University of Warsaw - opposed the mass expulsions of their students.

Something was going on and the academic staff had to have known about it.  Because of scenes like this:  I’m walking down the Krakowskie Przedmiescie.[2]  Someone comes up and puts their hand on my shoulder.  I was scared that it was a police officer.  I turned around - no, it’s Professor Bobrowski.  He says, “Well, first you don’t go to the Army, now you don’t recognize your professors!”  I said “I was looking for you at your house.”  And he said: “In times like these, I try not to be easy to find.”  He thought that my issue with the army was taken care of already, and that I wasn’t going.

But there were still some things being hashed out at the upper levels of the Army.  Because suddenly they came out with a new initiative.  A few days later, yet another soldier came to our house, with another draft card and train ticket.  This time I was being called up for maneuvers in Hrubieszow, in the Lublin voivodeship. 

Once again, there was no one to ask what was going on.  The political economy department, like a few others at the university, had been shut down.

Those were very nerve-wracking times - no one knew what was going to happen tomorrow.

Apparently I showed up on the list of the most active students who organized or took part in political demonstrations.  The list was prepared by the commandant of the Warsaw police and it had around a hundred names on it.

It wasn’t true.  I didn’t organize anything and I didn’t take part in anything. 

Of course, I was at the rally on the 8th of March, but only because the political economy department was in the Kazimierzowski Palace - the same building as the the rectory, where the students had gathered.  I wanted to get into my department, but I couldn’t squeeze through, so I stood on the side.  I didn’t shout any slogans, just observed what was going on.  Which was, of course, very interesting.  Then the “working-class activists”[3] showed up and started beating people with batons.  I ran.

My father tried to talk to people he knew.  I don’t know who he went to or who he asked for help.  He was told that calling up the students to the army was a top-secret action by special units, and no one had concrete information about it or the ability to intervene.

Artur Sandauer’s[4] son also got a summons.  Prof. Sandauer told me many years what had happened.  He was supposed to go to France for a cultural festival that was being organized under the auspices of the French Communist Party.  So he went to the head of the head of the cultural division of the Central [Party] Committee, Wincenty Krasko, and told him that if they took his son into the army, then he wasn’t going to France - and they could choose what they wanted.  They could let his son go, or they could choose to have a serious problem with the French Party.  They let his son go.

My parents took me to the train.  At the station I met four students from other departments of the University of Warsaw whom I hadn’t met before.  One was from the physics department, another from chemistry, the third from Polish studies, the fourth was a mathematician.  The physicist was the son of a high-level official in the Planning Commission, and as I later learned, his father knew [Prime Minister] Cyrankiewicz and went to him to ask for help.  He was told that Cyrankiewicz had nothing to do with this action and he couldn’t do anything about it.

The four other students had had their academic privileges suspended - the Dean’s Office had informed them.  From that I inferred that I was also suspended, and I probably just hadn’t been informed because my department was closed and the ladies from the Dean’s Office were on leave.

But why I was suspended, I still don’t understand.  Of the five of us [at the train station] only the fourth - from mathematics - had been active.  The rest were like me.  They knew the wrong people.  I knew a lot of activists because in the political economy department there was a large group of “commandos.”[5]  And of course I can’t rule out that I got a couple extra points for my father, who worked in the Ministry of Internal Affairs until his retirement.[6] 

We rode to Hrubieszow and reported to the garrison, where we were greeted by an officer in an aviator’s uniform who introduced himself as Captain Pawelec.  He was one of the deputies to the Political Officer.  All of us had Category “D” - incapable of service - changed to “C” - capable with limitations.  I asked Captain Pawelec how were going to perform our service “with limitations.”  I was told: “Yes, well we know how you got those limitations for yourselves.”  I didn’t argue any more with him - it was senseless.

We found ourselves in a so-called “part-time training battalion.”  Normally in a battalion there are three companies.  In ours, there were four.  Our company had around 25 people, all students.  I don’t know how many were Jews or of Jewish heritage.  They called themselves various things.  Probably the largest number were from Warsaw.  A few for sure.  Some of them had been added to the unit before us.

We were placed on the normal base, but we were isolated from the soldiers in the main unit.  One Sunday, when they had a swearing-in ceremony, we were taken out to a brick factory near Lublin, so that we could see a factory where the working class “supported the Party line in sweat and toil,” while also not ruining the mood on the base.

One day we were marching on the training field and digging ditches.  The next day, we got political training, specifically about Zionism.  And at night we sat on our cots, locked up.  We didn’t get any newspapers or, if we did, we got newspapers with the articles cut out.  Almost like in prison.

The leaders of our squads were cadets from the officers’ school in Wroclaw who had finished their second year of studies.  They tried to give us a hard time.  But everything they tried would backfire on them.  For example, they gave out gas masks and tried to scare us by tossing various gas canisters at us.  Then they realized that they were actually giving us training on how to flee and take care of ourselves during a demonstration.  So they gave up on those exercises.  Another failure was the plan to take us to the officers’ club to watch the Eisenstein film “The Tank Potemkin.”  The film was ideologically appropriate up until the moment when one of the officers of the titular tank says that everything is the fault of the students and the Jews.  We burst out laughing.  The screening was cut short. 

The deputies to the political officer were doctoral students or doctors from the Military Academy of Politics.  The deputy to the political officer of our battalion was a Lt. Col. Szczesniak, a specialist on Zionism.  He went on to write a fairly large work on the perniciousness of Zionism.

We asked him if he would do a lecture for us.  You could speak directly to the deputy to the officer for political affairs without going through the normal hierarchy.

We wanted him to tell us what was going on, what this was all about, why are we here and how long are they going to keep us here?

We could only speculate that there were still student protest meetings going on, maybe demonstrations. 

Lt. Col. Szczesniak agreed.  And one Sunday he came with a prepared lecture.  He began with a warning, that what he had to say might be very unpleasant for certain soldiers of Jewish ancestry.  “But since,” he said, “you came to me on your own, I will give you this lecture.”  And he started to talk about the unique harmfulness of the ideology of Zionism.  I learned not only that Zionism is a very bad thing - which I already knew from my parents, who were communists and who said that, before the war, the worst enemies of communism were the Zionists.  I learned something even more interesting - that I, as a Jew, was a Zionist.  For Szcesniak, everything revolved around the Jews.  And when he spoke of the enemies of Poland, it also turned out that most harm was done by Jews in Zionist positions.

He gave the names of a few enemies who had fled from Poland.  Jews of course.  He dropped in last names like Swiatlo,[7] Tykocinski[8] and Monat.[9]    

“They,” he told us, “are Zionists and from a young age they were engaged in Zionist activity.”

That intrigued me. 

During political discussions none of us ever spoke up.  We not only did not try to explain or convince them of anything, but we were even afraid to carry on any kind of discussion with them.  But this time, I couldn’t take it.  I raised my hand and asked the Colonel in a formal way, if he could tell me which Zionist organizations Swiatlo, Tykocinski, and Monat had been in.

He said: “Yes, of course.”

I knew a little bit about the different life-paths of communists and that some of them might have been in some kind of Zionist youth organization when they were young.  I was interested to hear which ones he would name.  But Szczesniak replied: “They were in the Polish Communist Youth League.” 

To him that was a Zionist Organization!

At that moment, Michal, one of our group of five from Warsaw, the son of a very well-known journalist, jumped up, asked to have the floor, and stated that he wanted to declare, here and now, that no one in his family, including him, had ever had anything in common with Zionism.

It sounded very awkward, because it meant that he was okay, but who knows about the rest of the audience members of “uncertain ancestry”? 

Poor kid.  The corporals used to pick on him quite a bit.  He didn’t have an easy time in the army. 

After two weeks the Jelcze[10] came and we were packed into buses.  There were old-model buses - two rows of normal double seats on the sides, and in the middle there were seats that folded down.  There were leather loops that hung down and you could hold onto to steady yourself.  They stuck us in the middle, one after another.  In the seats on the sides were cadets from officer training school.  We were surrounded by them. 

We drove through the night.  They were singing anti-Semitic songs.  The whole time I was wondering who taught them these songs.  They were young people.  I doubt that they even knew words like “szmonces.”[11]  And they definitely didn’t know what szmonces were.  But they singing songs, for example, about Jojne[12] who has a rifle, the rifle has holes and Jojne doesn’t know how to shoot it.  But the song was completely twisted up, passed through some kind of filter so that it didn’t sound funny.  That night it sounded threatening.  I don’t think they really could tell whether any of us was or wasn’t a Jew.  For them, we were just students who had acted up and had been enlisted into the army for discipline.

We arrived in Wroclaw.  In Wroclaw we were loaded into trucks and taken to Dobry nad Kwisa, near Zagan.  This was the Warsaw Pact training grounds.  We were added to a group of twenty students who were already there.  Among them were three of the leaders of the student strike in Lodz.  [The authorities] tried to tie them to the organizers of the Warsaw demonstrations, prove that they had connections to Jews, but it didn’t work out, so they pulled them out of our penal company and hauled them off to Lodz, put them before a court, and locked them up for two years.

We were in a real training camp, in tents.  Just then they were starting maneuvers in preparation for the invasion of Czechoslovakia.[13]  Serious preparations.  We saw how airplanes were dropping incendiary bombs in the distance, there was a lot of artillery fire, tanks were rolling.

We were shaking in our boots.  Today I can laugh about what I went through there, but at the time we weren’t laughing.  We were literally trembling.  Someone’s parents sent us a can of cocoa powder and we couldn’t even eat it.  We picked it up with a spoon and our hands were shaking, we couldn’t hold our breath and we ended up blowing it all over.  A whole can, wasted.

One day, some general rolled up in a Volga for a review.  Based on his shiny boots you could see that he didn’t spend a lot of time in the field.  He walked around for half an hour, received some reports, and disappeared.

The training camp was run by a counter-intelligence captain.  He lived out of a truck.  On the platform instead of a cargo hold there was a cabin.  He lived and worked in it.  He sent for the five of us from Warsaw.  They brought us to his truck and then we were called up one by one.  I was called first.  Each of the officers had a different way of taking to us.  Most of them called us “ty” [“you” - informal].  Some of them called us “citizen” [classic communist era formal address].  The counter-intelligence captain tried to be collegial and called us “friend.”

He told me to sit and he said: “My friend, we have an issue here and I have to ask you a few questions.”  And he asked what my parents did.  I told him: “My father worked in the Ministry of Internal Affairs until 1963, most recently as a division head.”  To which he replied, “Well then, we were colleagues.”  I said, “I don’t know, it’s hard to say, but from what I know there might be a difference between civil and military counterintelligence.  And if you called me here to talk about my father, captain sir, I’m not really able because I don’t know exactly what he did.”

Then he asked: “And my friend, what exactly is your nationality?”  I said, “Jewish.”  “Do you mean you are not a Pole, my friend?”  I said, “I am a Pole, a Polish citizen, but of Jewish nationality.” 

He asked: “And what does this [Jewish nationality] consist of?”  I said “My parents told me about Jewish holidays, what they are, about their historical basis.  We aren’t religious,” I said, “so we don’t pray and we don’t observe the holidays in a traditional way, but my mother makes food that is traditional for the holidays.”  I was very nervous.

“Also,” I said, “I went to Jewish camps, I went to Jewish clubs, and I am a member of the Jewish Social-Cultural Association of Poland.  So that is the basis for my Jewish identity.”

He asked: “And, my friend, did you receive ritual shipments?”

I didn’t know how to react.  You know what that situation was like?  On the one hand, you’re afraid, because you don’t have any idea what he’s getting at; on the other hand, you want to laugh, because the question is absurd, even idiotic.  Because after all, what does “ritual shipments” even mean?  I couldn’t stop myself from asking what ritual he had in mind.

He said: “Well, my friend, you know - the Jewish ritual.”

I told him that I didn’t really understand his question.  But if he was asking whether the oranges that our relatives in Israel would sometimes send us during the winter were kosher, I suppose that yes, they were.  And that the matzo we would receive from the Jewish association during Pesach was certainly kosher.

I would gladly have asked him directly whether he was thinking of the myth perpetuated by the Catholic Church that Jews took blood from Christian children and baked it into their matzo.[14]  But I was afraid that he would see that as a provocation on my part.  I had a strong sense that he had been instructed on what to ask, but not fully instructed, because he didn’t really understand how to talk about the topic.

He asked me whether there were other Jews in the camp.

I told him: “I know that I am.  As far as whether anyone else is, that doesn’t interest me.  We are living under such pressure, that right now the issue of Jewish identity isn’t important to me at the moment.  All I’m interested is when we are leaving here, and if you, captain sir, could tell me that, I would be grateful.”

He said that he didn’t know.  And that was the end of the conversation.

Then they called the next person.  After half an hour, he came out and immediately he asked: “Why did you tell him that I’m a Jew?”  I said “Why do you think that?”  “Because he asked me why I’m hiding that I’m a Jew, that you already told him I am.”  I told him: “That’s a typical provocation.  The fact that he said that doesn’t mean that I actually told him that.”

Then I took him aside.  I said “He wants to play us against each other.  And force you to admit you are a Jew.  But if you don’t want to officially admit your Jewishness, that’s your problem and your situation.  Don’t put that on me.”

Of the five of us, only I admitted that I was a Jew.  I put it in writing, that I am a Jew, and when they asked me my nationality, I said “Jewish.”  And the others didn’t.  Unlike me, they didn’t go to Jewish camps and the Jewish cultural association, and I think for them that kind of confrontation with reality was quite painful.  As a practical matter it signified the negation of all of their parents’ efforts to establish them in Polish society.  The path that their parents had chosen for them had been blocked off.  They were told “You made it this far, but now that’s it.  You have to admit what you are.  Because we already know.”

I didn’t see the sense of engaging in all that.

Suddenly in the morning, we were told that our parents were coming.  My father came, and the mothers of the other four.  It was incredible.  In the camp there were a few hundred students and only the parents of the five of us from Warsaw came.  I suspect that people from Warsaw, especially those who had prior contacts with the government authorities, had a better sense that the situation was really becoming unsafe.  And besides, in Warsaw the situation was more critical, the repressions were more serious and therefore their concern about us was greater.  In English they have a saying, “your guess is as good as mine.”  Beyond the fact that they were Jewish, or of Jewish ancestry, our parents had nothing in common.  But they found each other and talked.  And they found out where we were and asked for permission to visit.

We were given a large room for our visit.  We were separated by a very wide table, without direct contact - us on one side, our parents on the other side.  And soldiers stood at our sides and monitored us.

Then we were allowed to go for a private conversation in a little wooded area off to the side.  My father told me that it looked like the situation in Poland was getting decidedly worse, because the tone of the speeches was getting harsher and there might be mass arrests, resettlements.  There was talk about the Bieszczady.[15]  Various things could happen.  No one knew what, exactly, because no one was sharing information.  Therefore, my father said, I should think about emigrating.  My father didn’t say “You are going to have to emigrate,” just “you should consider it.”  At that time no one knew what form emigration would take, what the process was.  I remember exactly that he said “You are going to have to seriously consider it.”

I asked him, “You really think so?”  “Yes.”

He was talking about me.  That I have to - not him, my mother or my brother. 

We were at the training camp until April 30.  On April 29, a group of officers in freshly-pressed or new uniforms showed up and we were called in for a discussion. I’m talking about the five of us, I don’t know what it was like for the others.  Students had been enlisted for different terms - for the five of us, the next day would be one month that we had been there.

The officers had holsters but no pistols and it was clear that they had been sent from Warsaw and there were supposed to confirm our release. 

I don’t know what they talked about with the others, but with me they talked about Jewishness and Jewish identity.  That was the word they used.  And while the counterintelligence captain had alluded in our conversation to Zionism and Jewish rituals, this officer asked me openly.  He was filling in the boxes: last name, first name, nationality.  I said, “Jewish.”  And he asked “So who are you, really?”  I answered with a question: “What does that mean, ‘who’?”  He specified: “Well, are you a Pole or a Jew?”

Again, I said: “I am a Pole, I am a Polish citizen, and I am a Jew because that is my nationality and that is my ancestry.”

He asked: “Well then, what are your ties to Polish culture?”

I said: “Exactly the same as everyone else who lives in Poland.  I went to Polish school, Polish is my native language, I like Polish literature, I admire our wieszcze.[16]”  I felt almost like I was taking a Polish language exam.  My sense was that he wanted to understand my identity, understand why it was that I felt I was a Jew and Pole.

The next day they announced that we were going to Warsaw.  I thought for a moment whether I should go home that night, or sleep somewhere else.  I thought there would be arrests before May 1.[17]  I didn’t want to go straight from the army to prison.  But I threw my hands up - too bad, what will be will be.  I got to Warsaw and a letter was waiting for me from the [University] disciplinary commission saying that as a result of my participation in an illegal gathering they had initiated disciplinary proceedings for which I was required to appear.

I went to the disciplinary commission representative.  The representative, Dr. Wiktor Suchecki, said that because I denied the charges contained in the police commandant’s report, he wouldn’t move to expel me, but only suspend me.  A few days later I got a notification from the Warsaw University Disciplinary Commission that I had received a suspension and that, in connection with the closure of the department, all of the students in the political economy department had to reapply for admission.  It went on to say that I could also apply for readmission, but not during this school year, only for the next academic year.  And that in connection with my application I had to provide proof of gainful employment and documentation that I had completed my military service.

That was the first moment that I thought my father might be right.

I went with my mother to the Vice-Rector, Bazylow.  She knew him from before the war.  She thought that her being there would make him explain my situation honestly.  We wanted to find out if there was any chance that they would accept me for the next academic year.

He said the same thing as the disciplinary commission representative: that I could not apply for readmission until the next academic year.  And he added: “But who knows what the situation will be then.”

Suddenly it hit home that I was not going to be able to continue my education and that I risked being enlisted into the regular army.  I wasn’t afraid of regular employment, but I had heard from a number of friends that they were looking for work and couldn’t get any.  So the army was waiting for me.  Not for thirty days, but for two years.  After which they might say that I had acquired important military secrets, and then who knows what would happen.

I think that it was part of a preconceived plan to convince people like me to emigrate from Poland.  So that I wouldn’t have any doubts.  Because I did have doubts.  In the end they convinced me.  Many of my friends had started emigrating.  In June I decided that I would emigrate too.

Maybe to Canada? 

A year earlier my father had been in Canada and the United States.  He left - nota bene - on the very day the Six Day War broke out.  He was invited by some relatives.  He came back and said that Canada was a country for young people, that they can choose what they want to do, that there were a lot of possibilities.  If they want to work, they can work; if they want to study, they can study.  We asked our relatives what the situation really looked like and they said it was hard to study and to find work, and that Canada was not a good solution. 

So I decided to emigrate to Israel, where they were offering scholarships and I could continue my studies.

Continuing my education was my primary goal.

I emigrated on October 3 by myself.  After I emigrated, my brother applied for an American visa at the embassy and he got it.  And then my parents decided that they would emigrate as well.  They felt that if the children were emigrating, then the parents should be with the children.  They were over 57 years old and retired.  They all emigrated in January 1969.  My brother and his wife went to the States via Vienna and Rome.  And my parents went to Israel.

[1]      Szlajfer, along with Adam Michnik, was one of the first students expelled from the University of Warsaw for opposition activities in 1968.  The large March 8, 1968 student demonstration that was the first major March event was in part a protest against their expulsion.

[2]      One of the best known and most prestigious streets in Warsaw.

[3]      “Aktyw robotniczy” which means something like “worker-activists” or “working-class activists” was a term in Party jargon for Party-affiliated quasi-official fighting squads (supposedly enthusiastic “workers,” but often members of the Volunteer Police Reserve (ORMO) or factory party organizations who received financial rewards for their participation) who could be mobilized to disperse and pacify protests.

[4]      Artur Sandauer (1913-1989) was an essayist and literature professor at the University of Warsaw.  During the Stalinist era he was a vocal critic of socialist realism as the obligatory style of art and literature.  He was the first domestic Polish author to publish openly in the Paris émigré publication “Kultura” and was a signatory of the “Letter of 34” in 1964, criticizing tightened censorship restrictions. 

[5]      The nickname of a group of students who were the most vocal and active in organizing the 1968 student protests at the University of Warsaw.

[6]      Many of the students who were targeted for repression in 1968 had parents who were (a) of Jewish heritage and (b) had formerly been low or mid-level government officials.  In this sense, the repressions can be seen in part as political score settling by factions within the government.

[7]      Jozef Swiatlo was a leading officer in the Ministry of Public Security during the Stalinist era.  He was renowned for cruelty to prisoners and those he was interrogating.  He was ethnically Jewish and defected to the West in 1953 - presumably the basis for the remarks referenced above.

[8]      Head of the Polish military mission in Berlin who defected to the west in 1965.

[9]      Pawel Monat was a military attache in Washington, D.C. who defected to the West.

[10]    Jelcz was a Polish domestic producer of trucks and buses, often for military use.

[11]    “Szmonces” refers to humorous anecdotes that were often drawn from stereotypical depictions of Jewish life.  Some of the most popular creators of szmoncesy were Jews, and they were not inherently anti-Semitic, but they could be perceived that way.

[12]    “Jojne” (a stereotypically Jewish name) was the protagonist of various songs and szmoncesy, often featuring him as a bumbling military recruit.

[13]    Warsaw Pact forces, largely Polish, invaded Czechoslovakia in mid-1968 to counteract liberalizing reforms that were taking place in response to the “Prague Spring” protests.

[14]    The so-called “blood libel” - variations on the theme that Jews ritualistically consumed blood from Christians - is ancient and not unique to Poland.  However, it played a part in certain tragic post-War events, most notably the 1946 Kielce Pogrom, when mobs attacked and killed a number of members of the Jewish community after rumors spread that a local Christian boy had been abducted in order to obtain his blood for ritual purposes.  The boy was actually not abducted and had merely run away from home.  Notably, in the aftermath of the Kielce Pogrom, the Archbishop of Poland, August Hlond, failed to disclaim the blood libel and maintained that the pogrom was not a racial incident, but a consequence of Jewish promotion of communism.

[15]    A mountainous region of Southern Poland where political prisoners were interned, for example, during martial law in the 1980s.

[16]    The concept of a “wieszcz” is highly specific to Polish culture.  The term means something akin to a blend of poet and prophet.  In Poland it specifically refers to three canonical Polish authors - Mickiewicz, Krasinski and Slowacki - whose poetry is viewed as not only the pinnacle of literary achievement, but also an embodiment of the Polish national ethos.

[17]    May Day, a national holiday in communist Poland.