Tag #157400 - Interview #88517 (Zuzanna Mensz )

I was an enthusiast of the new order – I thought we were making a brave new Poland. I was in the party [PZPR] 26 until the Wujek coal mine shooting during the martial law 27. When I heard about it I gave back my membership card. But even before that I knew that’s not the way. My husband got disillusioned early on and turned to revisionism. He did not question the ideology as such but there were things he didn’t like and he would be vocal about it. He stayed in the army after the war. He completed extension degree in Polish history. He was a teacher in a military academy and he spoke or perhaps wrote about his doubts a bit too early. When Stalin died in 1953, critical voices rose in Russia about the cult of personality. My husband said something to that effect; a tad too early for Poland, it turned out. So they demobilized him in 1955 I think. He gave back his party membership card soon after the Khrushchev’s letter 28. He then worked in the Ksiazka i Wiedza publishing house as an editor. His health deteriorated early and he retired at the age of 55 – he was entitled to a military retirement plan. He died in 1991.