These are my three brothers - Bernard, Jerzy and Michal - with a friend of theirs. I can not recognize who is who, but the one sitting in the front, that is Jerzy. This picture was taken in the 1930s. I don’t know who took this photo.
My brother Jerzy was a communist. Michal was one, too. Only the oldest one, Bernard, was not. He didn’t belong to any other party either. When Michal and Jerzy started going to some meetings, rallies, my parents were not very pleased. My parents suffered a lot because of my brothers’ involvement in the communist movement.
Jerzy was studying at the Faculty of Law at Warsaw University, but when he was in his 4th year, two months before graduation, he was arrested for communist activities. He spent four years in jail.
My parents hired a lawyer for him and very intense efforts were made to shorten his sentence. He didn’t stay in the Zamosc jail for long; they took him to a prison in Drohobycz. It wasn’t a very bad prison, that is, it was a low-security prison.
Later, in 1932, they arrested my younger brother, Michal. He was 18 years old then. He was a very talented boy. Michal didn’t manage to study anything, because he had just graduated from gymnasium and then he disappeared. At first, in the first level court, he got five years.
Father didn’t have money to save him, because it had all gone to save Jerzy, so there was no help for Michal. But an appeal was submitted and, because he was young, he was 18, the appeal court shortened his sentence to two years. He spent the two years in Wronki. It was a very hard prison. When all those jail stories started, the material situation of the family really got worse.
