The Birth of Poland's Free Trade Union Solidarity

Bogdan Marzewski (0:01)

As people, we would march peacefully through that headquarter of Solidarity office that was in Gdansk. The police brought those water cannons, those batons, those big shields. They called us to disperse, and some of us would get whack over the shoulder, over the head.

Ian Sanders (0:25)

One morning in August 1980, the noise of 10,000 shipyard workers suddenly stopped.

Something extraordinary was happening. As a young shipbuilding student, Bogdan finds himself in Gdansk's Lenin Shipyard. As workers down tools and the movement that will become Solidarity begins to take shape. What follows is a remarkable journey through the final decade of communist Poland. Bogdan recalls student occupation strikes, his shock of martial law, encounters with riot police and his unconventional escape from military conscription. Then in summer 1989, Bogdan and his wife board a flight for Canada with borrowed money, a few possessions and no certainty about what comes next. This is a deeply personal story of resistance, freedom and starting again.

I'm delighted to welcome Bogdan Marczewski to our Cold War Conversation. So this shipbuilding engineering program, as part of that, you happen to be in August 1980, in the same shipyard that Lech Walesa is in, at the time that Solidarity, the Polish Free Trade Union, is founded. Can you describe the shipyard, what it was like to be there, and what you hear on what happens?

Bogdan Marzewski (1:59)

So I remember we started the shipbuilding practicum before the first year of school began in October. We were expected to learn how to do the welding, some basic ropes of the trade, so that we would be placed in some barracks, like a workshop with some tools to carve out stuff from steel to do simple things.

We had no idea what was coming, because we have been going there for about two weeks, or maybe at least one week. We were having fun. We were doing cutting out shapes using steels, like with that torch. And then for us, it was a fun time. And then one day, this is the morning of the 14th, we hear, because usually there was a noise, there's just 10,000 people, the cranes, the machineries, you can hear the vibration all around when you show up on the shipyard. And then all of a sudden, it's like a deafening quiet, something, as if something happened. So, we stopped working, and we peeked through the door and the windows that there was some march formation. People are walking in columns, they organized themselves, and we were like, what is going on? The instructor was very scared at the time, that guy who was taking care of us. He was like, he was probably in my mind, like the very useful idiot that would be following the orders, taking orders from the commies. So he kept us, he said, get away from the window, don't look, close the door, don't open the door.

But we were able to notice that they were walking and holding those banners, like we demand more money, we demand bread, some signs would say, simple sort of a connection to, we need a life that you can sustain. We need Anna Valentinovich to be brought back to work because she was fired.

After several hours, because we didn't do anything, he couldn't do, there was no telephones, there was nothing like a quick communication. Someone came to the door, talked to him on the outside, and they decided to gather us. They said, let's go, and they walked us through the plant, and they say, we will be boarding the bus. The coach buses showed up, and they put us in, and they took us out from the shipyard to some nearby town or a village. They had some nationalized farmlands, and they had some, I remember, tulips bulbs, we needed to sort that stuff. So they kept us away outside from the event, and the next day, when we showed up to the, because they didn't tell us, don't come back, et cetera. They didn't know this is the second day, and we have no idea that this is going to be a national strike unfolding.

There's like a police, like those, the militia that sort of, communist police outside. There are people, a lot of like a press, not a lot of press, but people who with some microphone and all those cassettes, you can, if you remember, there were like a tape recorders by the, inside the bag and some microphone trying to get some informations.

And the next day, in the morning, they, we showed up in the shipyard. We went through the gate. It still was, the strike was still creating momentum, getting momentum. They let us in, but directly they said, let's go and board the bass. So they kept us for the second day on the same farm, sorting those tulip bulbs, whatever. We were just wasting time. But in the meantime, we knew, because it's word of mouth only. There's nothing, no communication, official report of events. Nothing is clearly known. They are probably panicking. The people who are forming the strike, they don't know whether they're going to be pacified. Nobody knows because 10 years ago, people were dying, right? Police was shooting at them. But this time, they didn't go on the street. They decided to stay within the boundaries of the shipyard. And that was a different strategy that helped them to sustain, to gain the momentum and to not expose themselves to attack, direct attack because there were like brick walls. You can see people sitting on top of those walls. Gates were crowded but from the behind. So no workers would be going outside at the time that I remember.