THE STORY

Two ladies of UK do a very scientific work of collecting memories of the inhabitants of Dzierżoniów 

- formerly Reichenbach ---->> "Project Dzierżoniów 20th Century Stories".

Here is the result of a conversation with me / my memories ...




Jan Pawul

I was born in 1952 and lived in Dzierżoniów until I was twenty. My father Michał was born in Giedlarowa, a village in south-eastern Poland, near Łańcut and near Ukraine. My mother Łucja came from the village of Dębno near Annopol, on the Vistula River. It was on the ‘front line’ during the War and the Germans moved them a number of times to protect them. She remembered the Germans as good people who would sometimes give them a piece of pork belly fat when moving them.

After the War, my father was conscripted into the Polish Communist army, which he hated. It was compulsory and if someone protested, they were handcuffed and brought by force. He told us about unpleasant punishments - having to stand barefoot in the snow or being hosed with a strong stream of cold water.

My parents met and married in Dzierżoniów. They both came from poorer areas of Poland to the so-called ‘western’ or ‘regained lands’, where there were opportunities for work and accommodation. My dad was a fire-fighter at first and later worked in a timber factory producing the wooden cases for Diora radio receivers. They were beautiful wooden boxes. He worked eight to ten hours a day and loved working in wood. He also hand-crafted accordions from scratch, which he dreamed of making and selling professionally. My mother worked in the Fleischer textile factory. Before the war it was one of five or six textile mills that were privately owned. After the War the mills were combined into one and given numbers.

click on the pix to enlarge

We lived in a house backing onto the Fleischer factory. It was a detached German-built house, similar to others nearby. I suspect this large house was originally for one family, but after the War was divided up for four to five families. We had two small crammed rooms; one was the kitchen. The air quality was poor as my father smoked and we were next to factories. There was an outside toilet, a hole in a plank, and no running water in the flats. We had to fetchit from a faucet downstairs. Slops and peelings were gathered into a bucket and thrown through a hole in the yard wall into a canal that came from the gas works. The gas works discharged the water, which was used to cool down the heated coal, in making coke and gas. Many other households also put their waste in canal and it all ran into the Piławka River. Our home had electricity and gas (which was still rare in the countryside) and there were tiled coal stoves to keep us warm. Near our house there was a small garden which tenants divided into plots and grew radishes and carrots, and later flowers.

There were also gas street-lamps. I remember the man who rode on a bicycle and wore a special cap who would light them. Inside there was a little flame that kept burning all the time and in the evening the man would enlarge it. I often met him on the way to school and sometimes in the evening.

I had a happy childhood. All of us played in the neighbourhood together, including German, Jewish and Polish children, and we were unaware of prejudices. Before we were of school age, the local mothers would take turns to look after us, as they were all working and there was no kindergarten.

I went to Primary School No 3 in Szkolna Street. I remember my wonderful first grade teacher who later taught us Physics and Chemistry in a great lab. We also learned Russian. The first important event for me in these years was in the 7th year, when a group of us started a pop band inspired by British groups like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. We did covers of Polish hits such as ‘Żółte Kalendarze’ (‘Yellow Calendars’) by Piotr Szczepanik. I played the drums. It was fun, but we were not very good and ended up in different secondary schools.

There was no religion at school, but as my parents were very religious, I became an altar boy. I liked religious fables, especially those that were nicely illustrated and told by the priests. We went to the Little Church near lower Dzierżoniów. I visited the parsonage often and the building where nuns lived. I was one of their favourite altar boys, but at some point I gave it up.

Our favourite game was pretend ‘gun shoot-ups’. Our guns were made from sticks, some of which were nicely carved. I remember how nice it was in winter when a pond froze and we could skate. We also had sledges on the hills. When we were older there were real fights, with one street against another. The town was divided into territories, each with their own group, and you could get hurt if you were in the wrong area.

I was a Scout for a few years. On the 1st of May parades I sometimes carried the flag, and we went on scouting trips. I didn’t like camping and I do not like being given orders, but I loved the uniform, knife and peaked cap. At school boys and girls were separated into different classes, but in scouting we were together and a girl I liked was part of the reason I joined.

I was also a keen swimmer, and Dzierżoniów had an outdoor and indoor swimming pool. At first I was very frightened, but a lifeguard helped me to learn to swim. I trained intensely and between the ages of 12 to 15, I was the fastest swimmer in town. The lifeguard was called Józef Kacer and we became good friends. He was well respected, but sadly committed suicide when they closed the pool. I recently visited his grave in Dzierżoniów.

I remember the plentiful flowers and nice surroundings of the town. There was a beautiful horse-chestnut avenue leading from Dzierżoniów to Pieszyce. Dzierżoniów had pretty arched bridges over the Piławka River, and the cobbled streets were also very pretty.

My mum pointed out the synagogue when I was young. She told me it was like a church for Jewish people, who had a different religion. There were lots of Jews in my early years. I remember one day kids were roughing up a young boy saying; ‘You Jew, go away from here!’ and my mother yelled back and stopped them. When we passed the synagogue nothing ever seemed to be going on. The Jews were dressed normally and didn’t stand out, you couldn’t tell them from Poles. Some of the Poles who had inherited the town, however, didn’t treat them well. There are painful historical events that I remember, but I could not influence them. At least I will talk about and acknowledge them.

Industry was such an important part of the town and area. In addition to textile factories, there were other heavy industries including a large flour mill. Apparently the flour mill had once been the largest in Europe. After the War, however, the Russians destroyed it. They transported all the flour to Russia, leaving none for local people and later took all the machinery and equipment to Russia. The mill was so badly run down by the 1990s that production was impossible, and it now houses an industrial museum.

I went to the Technikum Mechaniczne (Vocational Technical High School for Mechanical Studies) in Ząbkowice. It was a one-hour commute and I was not very interested in technical subjects. However, I had friends at the ‘Radiobuda ’school in Dzierżoniów, and in my free time I would work with them on their school radio station. This was in a separate villa apart from the school buildings. The students had built a professional radio studio, with a mixing table and lots of interesting equipment. I worked with them and got hooked. I made special programmes for the school that aired in their 20-minute breaks, and I recorded important announcements from the headmaster, broadcast during lessons. The Radiobuda Headmaster praised the announcements, saying they were ‘unlike what you guys were doing before’. My chest puffed out, I was so proud. I was in charge there for a year and a half, even though I was not a student. We called the radiostation, Radio RTV.

I also loved to go to the cinema and a key event in my life was, when I was fourteen in 1966, I saw the film “A Hard Day’s Night”, in Poland called “The Beatles”. It was a black and white film and featured their early songs. That was the beginning of my journey into music and towards becoming a disc jockey.

I learned about deejaying through a Jewish friend. We would listen to his records and look at his Western music magazines like Rolling Stone. We didn’t know English and didn’t understand them, but we looked at the pictures and interpreted them in our own way. When he and his family were forced to leave in 1968 and went to the US, he left some of his collection with me. We corresponded and he told me about discothèques and DJs, and how they played records and people danced and listened. I decided I would start something like that here. It was this knowledge and the record / magazine collection that got me accepted by the students at Radiobuda. The first place I deejayed was the Bielawa Cultural Centre. It was fairly new and the director agreed. We organised the first discotheque at ZDK ‘Bielbaw’(ZDK- Zakładowy Dom Kultury) in 1970. I also (that was first, discos next) gave lectures on deejaying where I played records, gave a commentary and explained techniques.

I never finished my high school education as I fell ill with chickenpox when I was 19 and almost died. By the time I had recovered, I was behind in my schoolwork so I didn’t go back.

At first the Communist authorities had no idea what was going on in discotheques, but by 1974 they began to take note. They believed that the phenomenon was sponsored by the West to derail youth. By 1974 there were hundreds of discotheques around Poland and many DJs. They decided to regulate it by requiring DJs to be ‘qualified’ and hold a certificate. There was no specific training, but you had to take an exam, which required knowledge of classical music, ballet, theatre and literature, as well as knowledge in whatever fields you had qualified in regardless of how relevant it was. Out of 1,500 who took the ‘tests’, which included competing at the discotheque console, there were only around 150 who qualified. This lasted till 1989 when it all imploded and things were unsuppressed with no ideological supervision.

In 1972 I moved to Górny Śląsk in Upper Silesia (in 1972). My parents had divorced and I moved with my mother. I also went to work in coalmines, as I could avoid compulsory military service that way. I only lasted about six months, as it was very hard work. I then went to Gdynia to work in the shipyards, again avoiding military service by joining the OHP – Ochotnicze Hufce Pracy (Voluntary Labour Corps), but I couldn’t stand that for long either. Finally, the army drafted me, and as a punishment for eluding service, I was sent to the navy for three years. I served less than half a year when I cut my arms with a razorblade to make it look like I had suicidal tendencies. I was sent to a mental hospital in Gorzów Wielkopolski. It was a shocking place with 2,000 patients, 400 of whom were soldiers. The doctor knew I had deliberately cut myself and put me in charge of mentally ill patients, which was difficult. With other soldiers, we had to take them out into the town for walks and guard them. In my room there were 14 - 16 of us. At the end of my time of under a year, the doctor gave me a discharge with a document that said I had social maladjustment with psychopathic tendencies. This was on my record, but as a DJ it did not matter. After the army my DJ career developed because there were lots of opportunities to play and earn money.

I went to the United States in 1989. I had a permit for a year and when the year was up, the Communist system had collapsed in Poland and, although I tried, I could not claim political asylum so I had to come back. Back in Poland, I again worked in discothèques, including a very large one for 3,000 – 4,000 people on the outskirts of Bielsko Biała. I was the manager responsible for inviting foreign stars. This was an important chapter in my life as famous stars were expensive and the contracts were risky.

I have been married twice and I have four children. I live in Ruda Śląska with my second wife and have a 90-square metre “Hollywood” flat. I call it that because I have modelled it to look and work like one. I am very comfortable. I have done a lot in my life, and have captured these experiences in blogs and books. I now have over 60 blogs on many subjects, including discothèques and DJs in Poland and worldwide, each of them interlocking with others like a never-ending river. I have also written six books. One of these includes interviews with 130 American and Italian DJs. One of my blogs is on the history of Dzierżoniów. Have a look!

The most precious place for me in Dzierżoniów is where our house stood, but it became an uninhabited ruin, and then was set on fire and burnt down, and is now a collapsed remnant. I have so many nice memories from Dzierżoniów, Bielawa and Pieszyce and go there twice a year. My wife and our sons love the town too.


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Interviewer: Joanna Dudzinska in Polish, on telephone calls 

from London to RudaŚląska, Poland: Dec 2020/Jan 2001. 

Translated by Joanna Dudzińska.

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authors:

Joanna Dudzinska and Ruth Geall are Oral Historians. They recorded my story as part of an oral history project about the lives of people who live or have lived in Dzierzoniow. The project is planned as an exhibition and website on migration to and from the town.

Ruth Weyl Geall
"My great-great grandfather was Alexander Fleischer of the Fleischer factory and my father was Klaus Peter Weyl"

... check: 

https://moj-dzierzoniow.blogspot.com/p/silesiana-oddzia-1-koo-mojego-domu.html

https://moj-dzierzoniow.blogspot.com/p/weyl-nassau.html

Until 1939, the Ruth family was associated with Reichenbach - today Dzierżoniów. Ruth will carry out a project on the fate of the Reichenbach and Dzierżoniów communities in the 20th century, based on "Oral history". The aim of the project will be to mark historical places in the city, conduct interviews with residents and archive materials. The project will consider historical periods concerning Jews until 1939, Germans in 1945-47, Poles who came after 1945, Polish Jews who left in the 1960s and the current inhabitants.

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Joanna Dudzinska 

 {ESOL/EFL Teacher & Event Organiser}