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evil. Everybody tries to inflate his experience to demonic propor–
tions. They do not want to admit that it was base , vulgar, trivial. In
Frankfurt I saw elderly middle-class gentlemen who were stubbornly
defending themselves. Nobody wanted to admit that he shot, that he
killed . The witnesses were dead, or mumbled something incompre–
hensible, confusing the facts. I was also at the first trial held in
Krakow shortly after the war - a fair trial and a credit to Polish jus–
tice. Those whose crimes were proved were sentenced to death.
Some got ten, eight years, or even less. The camp doctor was acquit–
ted and sent back to Germany because it turned out that he helped
some people. One should keep in mind the popular moods of that
time. The memories were still fresh in 1945. We were taken to the
court by our professor of law, Gwiazdowski - a lesson for future
lawyers. These were the last glimmers of justice . In the Stalinist
period a portion of the society resisted, too. It did not take part in
this race of servilism. Why, then, did the engineers - or rather tink–
erers-of human souls compromise themselves so much? I experi–
ence it as something painful. I shall die ignorant of our time. All I
know is that the human soul is impenetrable . I can learn nothing
from those who "laid the foundations of socialism." Fear, pride,
perverse joy of humiliation, lowly material interests- how can one
make literature out of something like that? The sad clarity of divi–
sions. I was surprised when I met people who tended this socialist
garden. They were not what I expected-especially the younger
ones. One of them wrote about an officer of the Security who - tired
after an interrogation - talked with the icon of Dzierzhynsky. Today
everybody laughs at that stuff. ... And suddenly I meet the au–
thor-an intelligent, sensitive man with a sense of humor. Now we
are on first-name terms; we even drink together. I would like to meet
a real demon, but so far-no luck . Maybe it is encouraging that the
devil leases a human soul only for a while. There are no demons,
only hallucinations of the sick mind . They should be exorcised in the
germination stage through common sense and laughter-in Tyr–
mand's way. The theoretical base of this ideology also went with the
devil. The theory of race invented by Mr. Chamberlain was pseudo–
scientific gibberish. Marx's prophecies were not fulfilled . How could
one believe that the closer one gets to paradise , the more intensive
the class struggle? One should not have listened to that , one should
have turned away. In 1956 they thought they brought about the
thaw. Next there came a painful blow. Gomulka was not only primi–
tive, he knew that the government was already firmly in the saddle.
