This is what KARTA is about. Everything we do is simply to tell the story of the past through the experience of individual people. We do synthesise history, we do not describe history. All we do, we do through sources, accounts, stories, documents, photographs - through people's experiences. This is what we have been doing in very many ways for 40 years. It is unbelievable how much we have already done. It is difficult to show. A few hundred books, many exhibitions, films. We have a massive database of recordings: 5000 biographical accounts. In our underground days we recorded a thousand stories from gulags. It is a unique collection. We made a huge list of the oppressed - a documentation of victims of Soviet repression - recovering data from post-Soviet archives, working with Memorial, recovering transport lists from gulags. For 20 years we also organised history competitions for young people, and research work. And all of that started with that piece of paper we created on 4 January 1982.
We were discovering unlikely stories. We had amazing experiences in the process, dramatic stories. It sounds like an anecdote, but it is true - a young eighteen-year old student recorded a story told by a sick elderly lady. When she finished the story she took a deep breath and simply died in front of him. He did not record again because he was unable to - so strong was the experience for him. As if she waited for this opportunity to tell the story. We made a lot of recordings like this back then. We had more than a hundred people secretly working for us all over Poland. We operated with no money, with primitive tape recorders and cassettes that were hard to come by. They were expensive anyway, and it took a lot of effort to get them. Then we hid them in our own homes because, after all, we had nowhere else to go. We copied documents and photographs donated by the people.
We decided to publish the KARTA magazine. The name KARTA has several connotations [“Charter”, “Card”, “Sheet”]. Firstly, we knew it would be one double-sided sheet of paper, because that's all we were able to manage. From what we read in the underground church library we knew about the existence of Charter 77 - the Czech opposition movement. This was a kind of reference point for us - after all, Charter 77 would also publish samizdat, i.e. hand-prepared prints. This is where we took not only the idea, but also the method of operation. There was also a reference to the Charter of the United Nations, the idea of human rights. So many ideas in one piece of paper. Of course, we knew that we would have to use pseudonyms, that we had to be brief, but very succinct; that every word was important. You can laugh at the pathos, but we’d say that every word was like a bullet, words were supposed to change reality. We had an incredible sense of responsibility for words, we knew texts had to be terse, pertinent and powerful, hitting the most sensitive point. We were young.
It was in September 1980. I came back for the long break at school. The long break was extremely important - we would use it to have a cigarette. I entered the staff room late and saw a group of people sitting there, it was quiet, they were talking about something. They said to me: "Listen, Alka! We set up a Solidarity unit, but there are not enough of us. Will you join us?" I said: "Well, of course!” They replied: "Hurray! That makes 10 of us, we're setting up a unit!". No pathos, it seemed like an accident. As I was the youngest, I was an enthusiastic, energetic person. Since I was the youngest I was the messenger, they would send me all over the place. I dealt with all the formalities with local authorities and in the Solidarity organisation. I immediately stepped into the role of an activist, so I was the best informed, I knew the most. As it happened, I started to set up an organisation for teachers. Apparently I have a leadership gene in me.
Alicja Wancerz-Gluza was born on June 26, 1965 in Warsaw, and grew up in a working-class family. After studying Polish philology at Warsaw University, she began working as a teacher. Since 1980, she was associated with the alternative theater community. In 1980-1981, she was active in the teachers’ Solidarity movement. After December 13, 1981, she became involved in publishing a newsletter about the situation related to the imposition of martial law. Then, in January 1982, she participated i`n the founding of the magazine “Karta.” She was involved in writing articles, editing, as well as printing and distributing “Karta.” In the first stage of its activity, the magazine’s topics oscillated around current affairs. When the public reaction to the demonstrations in August 1982 left the “Karta” community disillusioned, a decision was made to change the magazine’s formula. From then on, “Karta” was published with less intensity, and the in-depth articles published there referred to the subject of human rights, resistance to dictatorships in the world. In the second half of the 1980s, Alicja Wancerz-Gluza took a stronger interest in historical topics. She was a co-founder and organizer of the Social Committee of the Eastern Archives, which collected witness accounts on the fate of people repressed by the USSR in the 1940s. After 1989. “Karta” was legalized, and Alicja Wancerz-Gluza as of 2022 is still engaged in educational, historical and social activities at the Karta Center Foundation.
