Tag #157403 - Interview #88517 (Zuzanna Mensz )

We’ve never decided to leave for good. During the 1968 campaign of hate 29 lots of people left, many of my close friends, first of all Mietek Perec and his wife. We stayed. Maybe I still had faith in socialism, maybe I was attached to Poland, no use debating it. Our son Julek moved [to Denmark] later, in 1969 I think. When the opportunities arose, the young people started to go abroad; they saw opportunities for themselves there. He said before leaving: ‘Oh Mom, I’ll be able to work and study there.’ He emigrated and got a degree from a technical university there and worked as an engineer in the local company F.L. Smidt. He’s dead now. He died in 2002 of a heart attack. My younger son, Pawel, got a degree from the Warsaw Technical University, and Piotrek holds a degree in physics. Pawel later worked in an Institute of the PAN [Polish Academy of Science]. He went on a yacht cruise to America and was supposed to come back but the martial law was imposed and he stayed. He works in a university. My third son, Piotrek, lives in Canada. I have five grandchildren. My granddaughter Asia lives in Warsaw, Susanna in Denmark, and Janek, Olenka, and Izabella in the United States.