Andrzej Kiełczewski
* 1959
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„I received such a task, surprisingly the telephone was not disconnected. Those days generally telephones were such an invention that I guess in the whole depot there were maybe two lines or so. Anyway, I had such a telephone line in an office room and I was trying to keep the contact by calling other Inter-Factory Strike Committees and got the information about what was going on there. This way with the surprisingly working connection, but I guess also overheard one, we were trying to find out what was going on, who… This way we were finding out that discussions started, proceeded, were proceeding. And also through the phone we found out that the discussions in Gdansk are coming to an end.”
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„More and more people were coming to the depot. There was a Mass, a concert. We had an impression that at night, one night, someone was trying to get to the depot and thus some patrols were formed and we would walk down that yard, where it was quite dark. And we were looking whether someone was trying to break in. Everyone was scared, maybe not of a secret attack but of some provocation. Because we knew that there can be such ideas to drop something, do something, some event. We knew the pattern of the Security Service’s actions, so it was...”
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„All the time there were such discussions and echoes of what was negotiated in Gdansk and Szczecin. What do the free unions mean, what is it all about? Who is this Wałęsa fellow? Where does that lead to?[...] but the discussions about what the free unions are, I mean what it will be, how authorities will allow for a free union to be formed and the name that it will be independent was not yet given, that was later. I guess independent it was during the registration procedure, anyway the names I guess were given then to free unions because of the tradition of free unions in the coast. And many workers attended such discussions about unions and all that. That was a hot topic.”
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Full recordings
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Wrocław, Polska, 14.12.2015
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It was worth fighting for freedom
Andrzej Kiełczewski was born on the 8th of May 1959 in Wroclaw. In 1979 he started to study philosophy at the University of Wroclaw where he was engaged in an activity of a Student Solidarity Committee. In August 1980 he took part in a strike at Grabiszynska street in Wroclaw. During the martial law he was interned and after half a year he was released on a parole with a so-called negative e reference (a passport which is in fact a only one-way passport). In August 1982 he went to Sweden with his family where he settled down. After a political transformation he began to come to Poland, at first within the equal economic projects. A businessman, a member of Bente Kahan Fund (Wroclaw).