APHS President Speech on the International Women's Day 8 March 2006

My name is Elizabeth Szczepanska and I am psychologist by profession, journalist, an athlete and human rights activist.

In 1980 I became involved in Solidarity Movement. I represented Solidarity and helped them to establish over 100 solidarity union’s organization in Silesia. I talked to thousands of people telling them simply that they had a right to be respected and freedom of expression.

I observed long outpouring of love and joy of unity of the Polish society, explosion of dignity of the workers, their peaceful self-restraint and spontaneous social support.

Before Solidarity whole nation had double life, we had two histories, two languages. One was a language of lies and propaganda, a second was a language of truth at our homes.

There were many jokes describing strategy of lies in the polish media.
If newspaper published news that government had laid a golden egg, people would say:
First of all,…. Not golden
Secondly,… not an egg
Thirdly…it didnt lay but stole it.

Solidarity ended the double life. The end of double life was profound psychological and ethical gain for countless individuals.
Now at last we could speak our minds openly in the workplace as well as behind the closed doors of our homes. No longer did we need to watch our words for fear of the secret police.
We discover for certain that almost everyone around us actually felt much the same way about the system as we did.

This was a source of tremendous relief.
It was like “coming up for air after living for years under water” Stanislaw Baranczak.

Being able to speak the truth in public as well in private was part of that sense of recovered dignity.

Solidarity gave us hope, hope and a sense of purpose. It gave us something to live for.

The number of attempted suicides in 1981 was almost one third less than in 1980.
Alcohol consumption declined about 30 per cent, people became friendlier, supportive, and we all felt that we became better people.

For 16 months I had the privilege to live in free country, I was surrounded by people who enjoyed their freedom.

Everything changed in December 1981 when martial law was imposed in Poland.
On the 13th of December 1981 I was transported to Jastrzebie, later transferred to Radocha prison- what means in English Prison of Joy and later to Darlowek.
Over ten thousand people were arrested this included 1008 women.

I was detained on the grounds that they (Power) though that I would not obey the marshal law and they supposed that I would not accepted rules of marshal law.
In additional explanation I was informed that I am very dangerous person for communist government because I was encourage people to think and having power to influence people’s behaviour in a negative fashion towards the party.

When I think about those months of detention I don’t think about suffering but about unity, solidarity and freedom. I also think about women as survivors.
About any women’s’ unique power and amazing gifts to be creative and flexible to over come obstacles with humour and perseverance.

I would like to tell you about women’s’ power and ways to over come fear and stress.

In a very short time the initial shock was over, and we realised that we are locked up and didn’t know for how long we be in the prison or what would happen to us. We decided that only what we really know and what we should do is to survive 24 hours every day.

There were 13 women in the cell. Double bunk beds, matresses filled with dry grass and one very old, grey blanket. It was very cold because it was winter.
The only creatures enjoying it were the rats looking for food.

The toilet was unsheltered and sink was frozen and unusable.
We were woken up at 5.30 in the morning. We had to stand up and dress up. Our prison clothes were collected before we went to bed.
Breakfast consist with one slice of dark bread and1.5 gram of margarine and 0.5 litre of dark tea. At 11 am we were allowed to have a half an hour of walk. After 12 we had dinner two teaspoons of potatoes with brown gravy and sour cabbage. At 5 was supper basically bread and margarine and tea.

Most of the time we were talking about themselves, we would sing songs, write poems and talk about our lives when we became free again.

Prison authorities did everything to make our lives more attractive calling us for interrogations or taking us in police cars driving around to nowhere.

Every time we left our cell we would undergo a body search.
It was a very humiliating experience. We had to take our clothes off and stay naked and asked to bend to show the female officer our bottoms.
Watching, crying, shaking bodies in an act of defiance on cooperation I proposed that we all will undress ourselves and stayed in check position showing our arses.
We did it.
It was the last time we were asked to do a body search. Quite a shame as we quite enjoyed it.

But this event was a very valuable lesson we learned. We found out that when we overcome a fear and faced our perpetrators we took away their power and control over us. We remained free and we didn’t loose our dignity.

Elizabeth Szczepanska

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