Growing Up Under Communism on Cold War Poland’s Baltic Coast

Bogdan Marzewski (0:01)

But we felt in our gut that one day it will collapse. Because we understood the mockery of the system, the stupidity of it.

Ian Sanders (0:18)

Bogdan was born just a month after the Berlin Wall went up and left communist Poland a month before it fell. In between lay a childhood shaped by shortages, censorship, compulsory conformity and a growing determination to escape. Raised in Slupsk, a former German city near the Baltic coast, Bogdan remembers crowded post-war housing, Saturday school, packed Catholic churches and a world where bananas, meat and even bicycles depended on contacts and barter.

Yet everyday life brought quiet mockery of a system few truly believed. Convinced that shipbuilding offered a route ahead, Bogdan entered university and found himself at the Gdansk shipyard in August 1980 just as Lech Walesa and Solidarity changed Poland forever before his eyes. I'm delighted to welcome Bogdan Marchewski to our Cold War Conversation.

Bogdan Marzewski (1:18)

I was born in 1961 I call it coincidentally when the Berlin Wall was erected.

Interestingly enough, I was leaving the communist regime in the same year before, just a month before the Berlin Wall collapsed.

Ian Sanders (1:40)

Where exactly were you born in Poland? What was the location?

Bogdan Marzewski (1:44)

The location is, this is the near Baltic Sea Swoopsk. So this is the city that is 18 kilometers from Ustka. It's another resort where you could just get on the train or city bus back during my times. And that was the sort of getaway during the communist time. We would go with parents on Sundays to the sea during summer vacations because Saturdays used to be working days. Even I remember we would go to schools on Saturdays as I was growing up.

And I have interesting memories from the time where everything seemed to be gray and not very optimistics, but people were able, in the midst of those diastrates, still provide some entertainment given the means that we had. And the times were tough, but still we were hoping that someday things will get better.

Ian Sanders (2:57)

Who was in your family?

Bogdan Marzewski (2:59)

Two working parents and three kids. I was, I'm the middle son. I have an older sister and younger sister.

Ian Sanders (3:11)

Your hometown was part of Germany until the end of World War II. So did your parents emigrate there?

Bogdan Marzewski (3:18)

My parents actually, after the Second World War, they would, because both of my parents and most of the population back then in Poland grew up on farms. There was 80% of the population back then connected to farmland. So when the war ended, my dad moved to that city independently. He was not far away from my mom.

They were close to Prussian border back in the days. So this is we talking about that part of the world where Olsztyn used to be. If I can remember, German city as well. So they had been close to the Prussian land in Poland and after the war they moved independently. My mom with her siblings, my dad was the youngest kid in his family. His brother was 20 years his senior. So he also moved to town because they were looking for some jobs. And apparently in the beginning they were assigned jobs because there was in the central organized system, nobody is sitting around. People were expected to work even for free or just to find any possible jobs. Now, the education they were doing at the same time concurrently with their working life.

The German cities were replaced, so they would move out people who used to live there for tens or even hundreds of years, and now newcomers would show up. So those German flats or blocks of buildings were occupied by newcomers. Interestingly enough, if you can imagine, let's say there's three rooms or two-bedroom apartment, they would assign to a family one room, and you would share the kitchen.

Some buildings would have bathrooms or washrooms in between stories or in between right levels in the hallways. Some would have already built-in bathrooms inside, so it will be shared facilities. The government assigned you to a particular place, and you had no way of saying, I'm going to select this or that. You just showed up and boom, you have been identified with your ID, where you belong, this is your address now, and this is where you start.

Ian Sanders (6:14)

And did your parents talk about what they found in these apartments when they first moved in? Did the previous German occupants leave loads of stuff behind, or what was the situation?

Bogdan Marzewski (6:25)

The situation, because we were born in, my sister, 59 and 61, so there was already some time between the end of the war and then establishing of the socialist system in Poland. So during that particular time when they met together, they already lived in places where they didn't have any sort of things left by Germans in their apartments. They would have to start pretty much from scratch.