Kornel Morawiecki

* 1941  †︎ 2019

  • "I didn’t establish it but after the second issue there was a mess up. Apparently I claimed that in “The Bulletin” circle there must have been some, some person who was a snitch or something, and they took the whole issue. Idiots, if they hadn’t taken the issue from them, they would have it all under control, I wouldn’t be working on “The Bulletin” and this all, the whole history would have taken a different course, at least our local history here. But as they took it [the issue] away from them, Jasio came to me, he knew that I have in Pęgowo, because he had been there, and he said: “Kornel, we have to organize it in a different way, we have to organize it this way, because this way - not really”. Because “The Bulletin”, it was a newspaper strongly connected to the Workers' Defense Committee [KOR] at the time. And this is how my adventure began, starting from the second issue".

  • "We decided that we will publish “Day by Day”, that we will not print „The Lower Silesian Bulletin” because it was only our newspaper and “Day by Day” was the newspaper of the attacked union, the activists of which are arrested. We decided that we will publish the next issue which was scheduled to be printed as early as during the night, because it was a newspaper which was published in the regional headquarters every two days – Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And we decided that it will be [published], we will publish it and by Monday morning [it will be] in the workplaces. The first issue of “Day by Day” was underground, a union newspaper, and it was our great success, because we wrote something, then it was written on stencils, they somehow got hold of a duplicator and printed the newspaper. And now my friends confirm that it was in Polar, it was in Fadrom, in Pafawag. And this is how our underground activity, just like that, carries on".

  • "It was said that the spring will be ours, and then it turned out that it was a superficial catchword, that it looks like this resistance activity will last much longer and that it is necessary for us to organize ourselves. And it was then when the elements which were later articulated in “The Fighting Solidarity” started to emerge, certain elements. We began to organize the listening in, with my friends back then, with Jaś Pawłowski, who was a friend of mine, before that a student of Wrocław University of Technology. So we started to set up the listening in. Listening in, it is an original and very important thing that happened in Wrocław, which was basically [nowhere] else, or if it was, then it was on a basic level, while here it was well organized and was being improved all the time. It was like this: first, we were listening to the militia, afterwards to the Security Service [SB] and later all the monitoring points were united in the same place where they were decoded. There people wrote down what they heard, then it was decoded and afterwards the announcements were made – every two, three days, from time to time. The announcements were that there and there, this and this action, the announcements were sent to the people who were doing something, to the distribution points, to the printers, to the organizers because departments were created, radio, distribution, stencils, regional divisions, communications – the organizational elements of our underground, and to such organization centers these things were sent".

  • "We made such a beautiful banner „Faith Independence”, white and red, “faith” in red, “independence” in white. And we went to Warsaw, in a group again, seven or eight boys, yes, and Dodek Winczorek was already there. Apart from me, Jurek Petryniak - with Jurek Petryniak we did, well, actually our wives did sew this banner, yes. We arrived and it was a huge moment for me, such a big appearance, because in fact ours was the only banner of this sort. Everything was “totus tuus”, so religious and then on the Victory Square a banner of Confederation of Independent Poland [KPN] appeared – it was maybe “Freedom Independence”. Also similar, they saw ours and made a similar one".

  • "Our first collective success, and at the same time a confirmation that we want to do makes sense, a social safe conduct pass, was the fact that in the first issue of “The Fighting Solidarity” we called, for the half year anniversary of the Martial Law - in the relevant issue of “Day By Day” we didn’t call for anything, that was the decision of Regional Strike Committee [RKS], at Frasyniuk’s, he didn’t allow to call for anything - and here we didn’t call for demonstration, we called to lay flowers under the “Solidarity” plaque on the half year anniversary of the Martial Law, on Grabiszyńska Street. In “Day By Day” there wasn’t even such call at the time. That was a definite difference. When we called for it, then “Day By Day” was printed by some people along with the “The Fighting Solidarity” and “The Fighting Solidarity” was included in our distribution networks, it turned out that people came to lay flowers there. As they came to lay flowers, they were scattered by Motorized Reserves of the Citizens' Militia [ZOMO], arrested, clubbed and it all was moved to the Perec Square, which was a natural bastion. It was a huge demonstration, a huge fight with ZOMO on the Perec Square, with the workers, this industrial area [community], there on Grabiszyńska Street, people were throwing flowerpots on the heads of people from ZOMO. Bonfire, a huge [inscription] in chalk “Free Poland”. They had to call for backup from Opole, Zielona Góra, Poznań and it was huge, they arrested several hundred of people, some of us were arrested, I remember Marysia Koziebrodzka was arrested. It was for us, for people in the underground, a kind of confirmation that this potential of the society exists, that people are waiting to be told that the resistance exists, there is just no leadership of this resistance and it was a confirmation that the “Fighting Solidarity” makes sense. It was a first collective success, victory".

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Wrocław, 25.07.2014

    (audio)
    duration: 03:37:49
    media recorded in project Iron Curtain Stories
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

Fighting Solidarity was the only organization that openly proclaimed the collapse of the Soviet Union. There was no similar organization neither in Europe, nor in America, nowhere

Kornel Morawiecki
Kornel Morawiecki
photo: Pamět národa - Archiv

Kornel Morawiecki is originally from Warsaw, where he graduated from the Adam Mickiewicz Grammar School in 1958. He then attended the University of Wroclaw where he studied theoretical physics and he received a PhD from this institution for his work in quantum field theory in 1970. Two years earlier Kornel had already been an active participant in a series of student protests as well as one of the co-organisers of the demonstrations against the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. He continued his anti-communist activities during the 1970s, when he was the editor of the opposition magazine “Lower Silesian Bulletin” (Biuletyn Dolnośląski). Kornel Morawiecki was arrested for printing, in Russian, a call for the expulsion of the Soviet troops and he was subsequently tried in the first ever political process of this kind in communist Poland. In June 1979, he and a group of his friends greeted Pope John Paul II during his first return trip to his homeland with a red and white banner bearing the slogan “Faith and Independence”. He worked with the Solidarity labour movement in Lower Silesia from the time it was first established and, after martial law was declared, participated in its secret planning meetings. In 1982 Kornel established the organisation “Fighting Solidarity”, which called for the restoration of independence in Poland and the other countries enslaved by communism, the division of the Soviet Union into independent republics, and the unification of Germany. Kornel successfully remained in hiding for six years, but in 1987 he was arrested and the Polish secret police strategically deported him from his homeland. He secretly returned to Poland one year later and, in 1990, ended his conspiratorial activities. He was opposed to the Polish Round Table Talks. After the fall of communism, he was a teacher at the polytechnic secondary school in Wroclaw. In 2007, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the creation of the Fighting Solidarity (Solidarność Walcząca) organisation, he refused to accept the Grand Cross of Polonia Restituta, arguing that this organisation deserved the highest Polish honour - the Order of the White Eagle. Kornel was the editor-in-chief of the biweekly publication “Truth is Interesting - A Civic Newspaper”. He died on September 30, 2019.