Jakub Bromberg’s apartment building in Lodz

This photo was taken in Lodz around the year 2000 by some friend of mine. This is the place where I have lived for 60 years. In this building I met my future brother-in-law and my wife. I got married in this place and brought up my son here too. The building  is located on Prochnika Street. 

I'm not suited to capitalism. I don't like this banditry, this gluttony. During the Polish People's Republic, I had a job. I sometimes worked at home, and I worked in the factory. When the controllers came I showed them that I worked, that I had a wife and a child and that I was earning money. Grosze. 

I remember well the fall of communism in 1989. I listen today how they praise Walesa  in that Ukraine. And who was he? He jumped a fence. He's rolling in dough now and he's set his buddies up as well. There are things which no one likes. 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 said 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.

Photos from this interviewee