20 years ago I left a communist prison
DAVID M. DASTYCH
Journalist, media agency owner
Warsaw, Poland (EU)
Phone: +48-22-408 27 87
Cell Phone: +48 514 270 639
david.dastych@aster.pl
Skype: davids.media.agency (for Skype users)
My Blog: “David’s Den”
www.canadafreepress.com/davidsden/
www.canadafreepress.comWarsaw, Poland
Sunday, February 28, 2010DAVID M. DASTYCH, now 68 (a photo by Irena Elster, Paris)Exclusive for CFP: Back to Freedom – 20 Years Ago
On February 28, 1990 – I left a
Communist Prison
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/20492
By David Dastych Sunday, February 28, 2010
BARCZEWO PRISON IN NORTH-EASTERN POLAND
[In Barczewo Prison was kept the war criminal, Gauleiter of Ostpreußen - Erich Koch. He died in prison in 1986. With him the communists kept there the Solidarity and anti-communist leaders: Adam Michnik, WÅ‚adysÅ‚aw Frasyniuk and Leszek Moczulski in the early 1980s. [and David M. Dastych and 
The late Colonel Ryszard Kukliński (left) with his friend and biographer Professor Jozef Szaniawski (we were kept in Barczewo Prison together)
A BOOK ABOUT COL. R.KUKLINSKI BY JOZEF SZANIAWSKI - A MISSION OF POLAND
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On February 28, 1990 – I left a
Communist prison
By David Dastych Sunday, February 28, 2010
In Barczewo Prison was kept the war criminal, Gauleiter of Ostpreußen - Erich Koch. He died in prison in 1986. With him the communists kept there the Solidarity and anti-communist leaders: Adam Michnik, WÅ‚adysÅ‚aw Frasyniuk and Leszek Moczulski in the early 1980s. [and David M. Dastych and Professor Jozef Szaniawski, Col. R.Kuklinski’s friend and biographer, in the late 1980s.
The late Colonel Ryszard Kukliński with his friend and biographer,
Professor Jozef Szaniawski
The gate of Barczewo Prison in Poland
Warsaw-Poland-February 28: It is twenty years already since I left a Communist prison in Barczewo [nicknamed “Barczewo-Hilton”] on Wednesday morning, the last day of February1990. I knew I would be conditionally released, after my 8-year sentence was reduced to 5 years by a Military Tribunal in Warsaw on January 2, 1990. But I didn’t know exactly when I would be set free. On that ordinary weekday, my lawyer D. Krasowski, Esq., came to see me and he told me I would be called to a Military Tribunal hearing in Barczewo Penitentiary. I wasn’t sure they would release me on that day. But the hearing lasted only 15 minutes, and I was told I was to be released on conditional terms immediately. Then, I had to go to a prison wardrobe to dress up and to my cell in a Special Ward to pick up my things. I asked for a permission to visit some of the co-prisoners to give them some things and to take letters from them. Then I said good-bye to the “fellow-criminals” I knew and I collected some cash from a depository, before leaving the prison for good.It was a bright, sunny day and, at first, I went to a nearby chapel to meet a monk, who helped me in my prison years. He wasn’t there, so I left some money in the chapel, I prayed briefly and I went out to take my place in my lawyer’s car.
FREEDOM HAS ITS PRICE
There were no cell phones at that time in Poland. But I didn’t want to call my family from a post office: my sudden come-back should be a surprise to them.I asked the lawyer to keep me company in visiting the beautiful small town of Barczewo, situated at a lake. When in prison, I never had a chance to see it, the only view from my cell was of some trees and a high prison wall. That prison was located in a former monastery. I took out my cash and I went to a store to buy a white shirt and a tie. To my great surprise, they were quite expensive. For several years I had no idea how much Polish money was worth, as there had been a big inflation.After a peaceful regime change in Poland and a victory of “Solidarity” in the semi-free elections of June 4,1989, I read a lot about the economy to get prepared for my later life.
PRISON POETRY
Our Poland Today
No money, no honey
But hopes and baloney,
No sugar, no meat
But an eternal Polish wit;
No vodka, no squash
But free computers “McIntosh”;
A heap of banknotes
But no real pay –
This is our Poland today.Like it? It wasn’t the only piece of poetry I wrote in prison. I also wrote the lyrics to a song about “Barczewo-Hilton” and a lot of epigrams like this one (translated from Russian):
Lech Walesa in Moscow
To sing a requiem
For dead Communism
In the name of a living “Solidarity”
In the second half of 1989, I asked the Military Court in Warsaw to grant me permission to correspond with family and friends in the United States. The permission was granted, a unique case, as I was convicted…for spying for the C.I.A. But the regime was over and we experienced more freedom in the special prison ward. To make some fun, I started to write letters in Polish, English and Russian, translating the ones in the foreign languages myself. The letters were then posted by my family. I wrote to my friend, Mr. Zygmunt “Ziggy” Broniarek, then a Washington D.C. correspondent of the chief Comparty daily “Trybuna Ludu.” Broniarek (still alive, over 80 now) promised me to pass some of my Russian letters to Ms. Condoleezza Rice. I invented a Russian pen-name for myself “Lev Davidovich Zek” and I pretended to be “an unknown Russian poet,” writing from a Siberian forced labor camp. I penned mostly short epigrams, like this one:
Gorba…Gorba
You’re a Greek Zorba
or (more seriously)
I remember the Afghan mountains,
Flames and blood of children and widows,
Bombs and missiles of Russian soldiers;
Death all around…
But we aren’t the aggressors, are we?
I am not sure Condi Rice received my “poems” as Ziggy promised to pass them to her. But a chance to write letters to American friends gave me a “lift to heaven” and a lot of joy. On August 1,1989, an American professor of law from Washington D.C. visited me in Barczewo Prison and I handed him a report about my case and about the conditions in Polish prisons. In 1989, there were many strikes and even riots in prisons. In Barczewo Prison, the criminals organized a strike and chose me as their “legal counsel.” That was too much for the Prison Warden and, of course, he refused. I enjoyed some respect among the co-prisoners, mostly ordinary criminals with long-time sentences, up to 25 years. The policy of that time was to put dangerous criminals into the cells of “political” prisoners, or “enemies of the state” like me, an alleged C.I.A. spy. I observed them carefully, as some of them were secret informers. I learned from them some skills and a prison slang, and even I practiced karate with one young bandit. When in Warsaw Central Jail, I helped some talented prisoners (painters, wood-carvers etc.). They offered me their drawings, which I still keep at home (perhaps I should scan some).
A COME BACK
FINDING A HOME
But I had no permanent job, no housing (I left my large apartment to the former wife and children). I used to stay with my old Father and with my girl-friend, traveling often and doing some business. Soon I registered my own small enterprise, called “Dastych Trading Co.” and I made good use of the economic freedom in Poland to earn money.
CELEBRATING FREEDOM IN BERLIN
In Berlin I visited good restaurants, theaters and clubs, and also the places near the Wall, where I was earlier on the Eastern side many times, since 1961, with no chance to cross over to West Berlin. That was sad.Later on I also went to Moscow, where nobody wanted to arrest me but friends accepted me with typical Russian cordiality and a lot of vodka. I also became a travel-guide to tour Europe, and then Asia on low cost. In the 1990s, I went to China to trade and this was a really good choice. I was also in Israel, meeting my close friend, a nuclear physicist, the late Mr. Shalheveth Freier (also a former intelligence operative). By following his advice, I started a multi-year operation monitoring illegal trafficking in nuclear materials and weapons…But that is a separate story to tell at another time.
Let me finish this article with a piece of poetry from prison. It’s about East Germany in 1989:
Go West Young Man
(East German style)
Here we go again
To the West on Freedom Train,
By Walesa we’ve been told
How to jump over the Wall;
Thanks to Poland, now we know
How to be brave and where to go;
Good-bye Genosse Honecker!
In the West we will live much better
And when all of us get invited
Germany will be re-united.
—[October 1989)
Oh. I have found some nice aphorisms yet (also from my prison notes):
* Socialism is the road to Communism that means – to nowhere.
* Capitalism is what remains on the bottom of socialism, after its reform.
*The law of the Left is lawlessness; the law of the Right is dictatorship;The law of the Middle is – probably – a democracy.
*The criminal code in socialism: a citizen has the right to be convicted.
* Lech Walesa is a Polish variant of Julius Caesar: “Veni, vidi, arrange”
*Three ways out of the economic crisis:
A liberal way – take care of yourself,
A socialist way – the state will help you if you help yourself,
A charitable way – free soup!
*** Generations pass by and prisons remain!
David Dastych Bio
David Dastych, 68 is a veteran journalist, writing for Polish and foreign media. He was also a businessman and consultant to foreign business, one time an associate director of Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) in Poland. Now he owns and operates an international media agency in Warsaw (David’s Media Agency), serving foreign authors and providing PR services to business companies.David can be reached at: davids@aster.pl
FROM: VIDEOFACT, NEW YORK, N.Y., U.S.A. - COLD WAR HISTORY
Our agents and double agents
They made real contributions to our winning the Cold War. Some of them paid the highest price for it.
“Farewell” – Col. Vladimir Vetrov
Col. Ryszard Kuklinski (died on February 11, 2004 in Tampa, Florida, U.S.A.)
Gen. Dmitri Polyakov
Adolf Tolkachev
Valery Martynov
Vladimir Potashov
Boris Yuzhin
Sergey Motorin
Vladimir Vasilyev
Sergey Vorontsov
Gennady Varenik
Sergey Fedorenko
Oleg Gordievsky (living in England)
Jerzy Pawlowski (died on January 11, 2005 in Warsaw, Poland)
Col. Oleg Penkovsky
Istvan Belovai (living in Budapest, Hungary)
Gabor Rimner
Mariusz Dastych (David M.Dastych journalist, 68, Warsaw, Poland)
Bogdan Walewski (living in the U.S.A.)
Stanislaw Debowski
Col. Peter Popov
Anatoly N. Filatov
Aleksander N. Cherpanov
Michal Goleniewski
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David Michael
Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
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Comments
I am so happy for your freedom
we all owe an enormous debt to men like you who give everything for others
You did so much for democracy.
Vanessa Kachadurian