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If things stay the way they are, there’ll be a revolution. This capitalism is banditry. The rich ones control everything: ironworks, whatever, brother to brother, friend to friend, selling everything; they’re selling out the entire country. The Jew doesn’t have a good life. Especially after 1989 it changed for the worse for me. I used to be able to make some extra money, as a mechanic, or somehow from the cooperative. Now they’ve taken everything away from me. Balcerowicz [Minister of Finances in the government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki] said [in 1990] that two years later he’d even it out for everyone. That it would be paradise later. That we’d only have to struggle to make ends meet for the first two years. And it turned out to be bullshit. Money stops being money.
We used to have discounts, now they’ve taken everything away. And it keeps getting worse. Rents are going up, now they’re going to raise them again in January. I don’t have a bathroom, I don’t have central heating. Is this a system? This is banditry. Even under communism, when I was working I said that I was a religious Jew and wouldn’t work on Saturdays. And now? It’s banditry, not capitalism. I listen to how it is with Ukraine [see Orange Revolution, 2004] [33], that they’re all great Poles now, going crazy in Poznan, Cracow for this Ukraine. And when the Ukrainians were murdering us? I know something about this, because I was living together with them. They stick their noses into Israeli issues, they used to do it with Arabs, now they’re doing it with Ukraine. They want to have this whorehouse, pardon my language, in Ukraine.
And now, what kind of a country is this Poland? One affair after another. I go to the doctor, because I am entitled to this, I have a referral to the hospital, even two referrals and they tell me: ‘Go back to the out-patient clinic.’ Under communism women whose husbands worked were at home. They also worked, after they came back home: in the cottage industry, making handkerchiefs for someone. Everyone would do that. You’d always make some money for light or electricity. I fixed machines: sometimes for free, sometimes for grosze, but I didn’t take any money from friends. And now it has all lost its value. We can throw away the machines. Lodz was a city, which exported textiles, textile products to all of Russia and all over the world. There used to be so many factories and where are they now? Where are the chimneys? Now all there is left is broken windows. They’re looting, destroying. There is no cottage industry, there’s nothing. It’s all over. [Editor’s note: indeed, many factories closed down after 1989. Lodz is one of the cities with the highest rate of unemployment.
We used to have discounts, now they’ve taken everything away. And it keeps getting worse. Rents are going up, now they’re going to raise them again in January. I don’t have a bathroom, I don’t have central heating. Is this a system? This is banditry. Even under communism, when I was working I said that I was a religious Jew and wouldn’t work on Saturdays. And now? It’s banditry, not capitalism. I listen to how it is with Ukraine [see Orange Revolution, 2004] [33], that they’re all great Poles now, going crazy in Poznan, Cracow for this Ukraine. And when the Ukrainians were murdering us? I know something about this, because I was living together with them. They stick their noses into Israeli issues, they used to do it with Arabs, now they’re doing it with Ukraine. They want to have this whorehouse, pardon my language, in Ukraine.
And now, what kind of a country is this Poland? One affair after another. I go to the doctor, because I am entitled to this, I have a referral to the hospital, even two referrals and they tell me: ‘Go back to the out-patient clinic.’ Under communism women whose husbands worked were at home. They also worked, after they came back home: in the cottage industry, making handkerchiefs for someone. Everyone would do that. You’d always make some money for light or electricity. I fixed machines: sometimes for free, sometimes for grosze, but I didn’t take any money from friends. And now it has all lost its value. We can throw away the machines. Lodz was a city, which exported textiles, textile products to all of Russia and all over the world. There used to be so many factories and where are they now? Where are the chimneys? Now all there is left is broken windows. They’re looting, destroying. There is no cottage industry, there’s nothing. It’s all over. [Editor’s note: indeed, many factories closed down after 1989. Lodz is one of the cities with the highest rate of unemployment.
Period
Interview
Jakub Bromberg