Gdańsk. Google says that it is a town in northern Poland, in the Vistula River estuary and bathed by the Baltic Sea.
But the traces of history that we can perceive in its old buildings, in the port and in the faces of passers-by, tell us about much more than that definition.
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It was here that World War II began in 1939, although at that time its name was “Free City of Danzig”. And it was here that the Solidarity union led by Lech Walesa was born, a movement that marked the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union and its alliances.
We are going to walk its streets while we understand why GDANSK is like a blues that blood and guns took care of composing.
In the Versailles agreements that put an end to the First World War, it was decided that the city would become an autonomous and free territory, managed by the League of Nations. At the same time it was agreed that Poland would have an exit to the sea incorporating the cities of Gdynia, Sopot to its territory, which meant the division of Germany in two.
This forced the Germans to have to cross through Polish lands to reach their furthest provinces in East Prussia.
This separation irritated Hitler who tirelessly demanded that Poland recover Danzig and its surroundings, alleging that the majority of its population was German, and free passage with its own corridor through that strategic strip.
As the Poles refused to give up their small outlet to the sea, the Führer decided to take the territory by force. So it was that on September 1, 1939, the German armored ship attacked the Poles.
This marked the beginning of one of the most tragic chapters in Polish history. Once the Hel peninsula was conquered, the Germans advanced across the Polish plain destroying everything in their path.
The purpose was to enter Warsaw, which they achieved on October 1, 1939 after almost a month of siege. The conflict grew in such a way that it involved more than half of Europe.
But the blues didn't end there. At the end of the war in March 1945, when the Germans had already been defeated, the Russians entered this enclave with force and destroyed everything again. The shipyards were the first targets, then it was the turn of the historic center. Everything was devastated.
But the end of the conflict did not mean the arrival of freedom. The blues had to go on. One totalitarian regime gave way to another. The years of Soviet rule began. Communism was imposed with force in a city of working class and industrial.
They were very difficult years. Controls, censorship, espionage, arrests, fear, queues, lack of basic products, rationing, hours of waiting to get gasoline, flour, butter.
The desperate situation remained in the air until 1980. It was the dismissal of a worker, Pani Anya, a crane operator, that triggered a mass revolt. The so-called “Polish summer of Gdansk”.
The workers locked themselves in the shipyard on a mythical August 15 and remained there for 18 days.
The electrician, nationalist and ultra-Catholic, Lech Walesa, "Babuensa" for the Poles, joined the group of workers jumping the fence.
Walesa ponto took over the leadership of a movement of young revolutionaries who were crying out for a change in society. He thus became a symbol of resistance against the ruling party of the Polish People's Republic.
Historians say that this was the beginning of the end of communism. They were very hard years but the struggle paid off. A few months after the revolt, the so-called "Gdansk agreements" were signed, from which a manifesto with 21 points emerged.
Then came the legalization of the "Solidarity" union, the first free and independent workers' association of the Communist Party, which was banned again between 1981 and 1982 with the introduction of martial law.
But then Perestroika came and the blues changed chords. In June 1989 there were elections in Poland for the first time. In November 1989 the Berlin Wall and Communism fell. And in 1990 Walesa won the elections and acceded to the presidency of the country.
The world had changed again. And the first piece of this dance moved again in Gdansk. Here the second world war began, and here began the end of the Soviet Union.
🌎 Subtitles in Portuguese, Italian, German, French, Russian and English.
🔎 I am Gustavo Llusá, Argentine, after traveling for several years to more than 50 countries, I settled in Latvia where I got married and learned to know another way of life, on the other side of the map.
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Негізгі бет THE BLUES OF GDANSK, Past and Present of POLAND
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