"In the year eighty-nine, when I suddenly saw that the Civic Forum was not such a simple affair, that there were warm activists there, but that people who shouldn't be there at all were mixed in, I distanced myself from the Civic Forum and had a bad premonition that things were going to turn in the wrong direction as far as democratic realities were concerned. So I arranged with my colleague, who is no longer alive, to go to Bratislava to see the Hungarians, as he saw it, because at that time the Hungarians were a great force in Czechoslovakia - in Slovakia and in Czechoslovakia. I had good friends here in Ostrava among the Rusyns, because there was the Union of Rusyns, and it was also in Ostrava, and I had... they were two agricultural engineers who were members of the Union of Rusyns, so I asked them how they saw it, how the minorities would look after the year eighty-nine. So we agreed to go to the Hungarians and ask them how they saw it. And when we arrived in Bratislava, the Hungarians were horrified to discover that we had come to them with a matter that had been discussed in Vienna the day before."
"In Silesia, we lived together and spoke the same language. There wasn’t... The only difference was that some attended Czech Masses or went to Czech schools, but among ourselves, in the cellar, on the road, and whenever we met, we spoke po naszymu. Let’s say... We also had someone in the family who identified as a Silesian. He joined the Wehrmacht, and when the war ended, he came back... and he sent his children to Czech school, but when they came to us, because they were family, we made fun of him and asked: 'How did you get along in the German army? 'Well, how would I speak German? I spoke po naszymu, and everyone understood because they were all people with the Volksliste. They were from Silesia and knew po naszymu, so we could communicate easily.'"
"My grandfather even had... The Poles confiscated his radio and piano, so he had a crystal and a plate and listened to London. And I, a stupid boy, told the children of Watzlica that we had a plate that played. Watzlica came in and said, 'Mari, what kind of plate do you have that plays?' Grandma couldn't think of anything else to do but bang the plate with her fork. 'Well, you see. Is it playing? It's playing.' But I came very close to revealing that Grandpa had a crystal radio in the basement to listen to London."
Stanislav Gawlik was born on May 6, 1941 in a hospital in Karviná into the family of Rozalia and Franciszek Gawlik. His family represented the Polish minority in the Těšín region, which did not give up its identity even in the times of increasing repression against the Polish population. As Poles, they had to wear the “P” mark on their hands, but thanks to the fact that both father and grandfather worked in the mining industry, the family did not face any other persecution. Stanislav Gawlik graduated from the Polish grammar school in Orlová. An elder in the army offered him in 1961 that he could graduate from university if he signed to join the Communist Party of Poland, which he accepted and received a doctorate from the Agricultural College in Wrocław. From the 1950s onwards he was actively involved in the functioning of the Polish Cultural and World Association (PZKO). In 1972, due to being expelled from the party, he did not get a position as an assistant at the university in Brno, so he accepted a job as a zootechnician at the unified agricultural cooperative in Šunychl. Then he joined the unified agricultural cooperative in Jablunkov, where he stayed until 1989. In the 1990s he participated in the creation of the political movement Coexistentia and in 1992 he became a member of the House of People of the Federal Assembly. For the protection of national minorities, he was awarded the Order of the Knight’s Cross by the Hungarian President in 2011. In 2024, he lived with his wife Sultana in Návsí in the Jablunkov region. The witness was filmed with the support of the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Ostrava.
