Jacek Kuroń - Consequences of my indiscretion (13/150) скачать в хорошем качестве

Jacek Kuroń - Consequences of my indiscretion (13/150)

To listen to more of Jacek Kuroń’s stories, go to the playlist: https://bit.ly/2PUj6tu Polish activist Jacek Kuroń (1934-2004) helped to transform the political landscape of Poland. [Listener: Jacek Petrycki, Marcel Łoziński; date recorded: 1987] TRANSCRIPT: This is how this story starts, it's hard to say what time of year it was. Anyway, one day a girl came to our house. She said she had been sent to us and that she was looking for a job as a servant. I really can't say how old she was. On the one hand, she seemed to be very mature, but on the other she seemed to be the same age as I was. Later the age difference between us faded. She could have been somewhere around 16 at that time whilst I was 9. My mother told her to do the cleaning and was very pleased by how efficient the girl was. She could open up the sofabed and do all sorts of things which village girls didn't yet know how to do at that time. When my father came home he questioned her thoroughly and said she couldn't stay because she was Jewish, and that's what he told my mother. It wasn't the first time that my father told Jewish people to leave. The first time it was my friend's father, and my father said, 'I have children, I have a wife'. For me it was the first, unspeakably awful, yes. However, my father helped this Grab later by hiding him. Whether he ran after him or not, I can't say. To throw somebody out on the street is a terrible thing for me, especially just before curfew. A day or two after that girl had gone, we were visited by a neighbour who lived in the same block as we did. We were living in a council block and so was she. Her apartment was some way away from ours. The whole building was pretty big with four staircases, in our staircase, further away, so I hardly knew her. I remember her well because I think my first erotic experiences were connected with her. She was a large, full-figured blonde and in the mornings, she'd come out onto the balcony eating an apple. Standing below her, I could see her naked against the sun. The first thing I recall is her ample, creamy bosom and her eating that apple. Anyway, she paid us a visit, although she never had any contact with us. Her husband was an officer in a German prisoner of war camp, and suddenly she decided to pay us a visit. She didn't ask about our neighbours, we were talking about neighbours, but oddly, as my father later pointed out to me, she kept asking about Jews. With a stony face, my father kept repeating he knew nothing about any Jews whereas I kept remembering stuff. Then she finally asked about Mr Markus who was being transported through the Tatra Mountains to Romania along with a bigger group of Jews, and we happened to be travelling to Kraków with them. We were going on holiday with my mother which was typical of my parents. There's this transport of Jews with my mother and me, with my father of course, riding on the bare boards of the truck. The following day, General Governor Franck was coming to Lwów so there were checkpoints at which the truck had to stop very kilometre, every 5 kilometres and every 10 kilometres. That was truly an unforgettable experience. The truck would pull out and then stop and so on. The atmosphere was extremely tense and the stress seemed to be contagious. I didn't sleep a wink the whole night long. That was an amazing journey. So I told her that he had travelled with us. My father gave me a surprised look and said, 'By train'. 'No, by car', I said. After she left my father slapped me across the face once and then a second time. He said the woman was a Gestapo informer. 'She's a Gestapo informer', he said, 'and she only came here because she had a tip off that we're involved in this Jewish business, she had reliable information, she came to check it out and you told her everything. You've killed Felek (my younger brother), your mother and yourself. You can get yourself killed, that's your business, anyone can kill themselves'. He slapped me again, kicked me and threw me out of the house. When I was halfway down the stairs he called out, 'Jacek!', so I turned around thinking he he was calling me back, but he only kicked my cap after me. I put my cap on and swore that I would never go back home again. And so I left. I was hanging around, playing football with some of my mates, and then evening came but I didn't make my way home. I had planned everything earlier. The street we were living on on Zumiński Street was a narrow street between Piekarska and Łyczakowska. From the side of Piekarska Street, it came out directly on a sawmill. In fact it was more like store of wooden boards. I climbed over the fence. It was a beautiful summer's night. I found a place for myself there in between those boards and made a kind of a bed for myself. The moon was shining beautifully over the town which was covered in darkness. [...] Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/jac... to read the full transcript.