Workers Defence Committee exhibition at Nowa Huta

Jadwiga Emilewicz, the director of the museum - situated in a town purpose-built by the communists to house a giant steel mill works - said during the opening ceremony that the exhibition gives a comprehensive picture of KOR, an organization which brought together people of different views and of various walks of life, united in their opposition to the unjusticies of the communist system.

The exhibition features KOR underground publications and bulletins, documents, photographs, film footage and recorded accounts by some of former KOR leaders, including senator Zbigniew Romaszewski, MP Ludwik Dorn and a minister in the Presidential Chancellery Jan Lityński.

The exhibition’s narrative is based on the story of an anonymous workers’ family and its recollections of the events of the mid-1970s – the price rises, strikes and police repressions.

The principal goal of KOR was to organize legal and financial aid to the workers detained and persecuted after the labour unrest of June 1976, as well as to their families.

Embryonic Solidarity

Poland’s first major opposition group, KOR developed wide-ranging activities, including studies on workers‘ living standards, the publication of newsletters and books outside the officially controlled network and the organization of lectures on topics that could not be debated in public (Flying University).

KOR members were persecuted by the authorities, subjected to constant police surveillance, beaten up, detained, and put into jail. Despite this, the organization had a great number of supporters and its role in developing the democratic opposition in Poland, eventually leading to the birth of Solidarity, cannot be overestimated.

KOR was also instrumental in providing uncensored information on the repressions of dissidents to wide segments of Polish society thanks to its contacts with foreign Polish-language radio stations broadcasting to Poland, and also in informing Western opinion about the political situation in Poland.

The prominent British journalist Neal Ascherson wrote in his The Struggles for Poland that “the aims of KOR were humanitarian, not political. But it was inevitably drawn into a political stand. (…) KOR’s real achievement was to overcome, very gradually, the gulf between intellectual opponents of the regime and the working class.” (mk)