E-VITA

It is a typical story for many Polish families. In the 80s in the martial law period which was the most grey, depressing, hopeless time in the modern history of Poland, very many people considered the option of leaving their country for good. They wanted to flee Poland to have a better and most of all free life in the West.
It was very difficult to decide to go for many reasons. Passports and travel documents were very difficult to obtain. It took several months for the offices, bureaus, militia, secret police, governmental institutions to issue all necessary decisions and documents. It was a painful process and often futile. People were not allowed to have passports and travel abroad or one member of the family only was lucky enough to have the document and could travel away…
One way to avoid the inconveniences and bureaucratic impediment was to go to a travel agency (there were a few) and buy a holiday trip to a western country – West Germany, Holland, Austria…
People went on a trip for tourist reasons supposedly and they left the group at some moment, they called the refugee camp or office in the host country and they claimed to be political or economical refugee status. After that they could get a visa of the USA or New Zealand or Canada…
My parents have a lot of friends. Some of them did leave Poland in that way. They escaped the country leaving their two children with grandparents in Poland, they found their way to the USA, but suffered horrible pains of separation with the rest of their family. At that time the prospects were they would never meet again, they could not contact, no letters, no phone calls. It was as if they were parted for ever. One had to be really determined to go leaving all their reality as they knew it behind, without the ability to speak foreign language, without enough money etc. Besides it must not be forgotten, such people – fugitives were stigmatized and disgraced by the propaganda institutions; also their relatives who stayed in Poland – they were labeled enemies, sometimes spies.
So only after almost six years since the parents left Poland their daughters were allowed to leave the country to see their parents so the family could be reunited. It was only possible, because a new regulation was introduced at the time when the regime was getting weaker.
They could visit Poland again after almost 20 years to find it completely different…
 

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