Tag #109031 - Interview #77965 (Jankiel Kulawiec)

I experienced the events of 1968 [17] at first hand, to some extent. Perhaps not directly from people, but through political pressures at work. I was simply forced to resign from my post and move to a less important post. That was a kind of unofficial suggestion from my engineer. He wanted to protect me, because my job was a very responsible one - I was a gang foreman at a furnace where they smelted golden copper classified as 4 9s [highest quality]. I was responsible for the work of the whole team, eleven people. And he was worried that somebody could damage something maliciously, and the melt would be rejected, which I would be held responsible for. So he made it clear that it would be better if I wrote an application myself for transfer to a less important position, to smelting lower quality copper. And that's what I did. As a result of that anti- Semitic campaign I lost about 1,500 [zloty] in monthly pay. It was a lot then, a tram ticket was something around half a zloty at the time.

As well as the change in my position, I also remember other events from that year. There were various marches, demonstrations, some of them anti- government - one such took place outside my window. Not because I lived there - they were just marching past. I remember that they had this banner - 'Down with communism', or something like that. And one Jew I knew - Friedman - was walking along. I think he was going home from work. They must have known him, because a few of them stepped out from the group and said to him, 'Come along, Jew, shout with us "Down with the PZPR!"'

There were anti-Jewish demonstrations too. Where I worked there was a mass meeting [an employee rally organized by the directors of state enterprises, at which a propaganda-style lecture was held; this was used frequently by the communist authorities as an instrument of propaganda], in my department, about the Israeli attack on the Arab countries. And there they shouted 'Down with Jewish nationalism.