Janusz Kaczorowski

* 1945

“Solidarity as it was founded was a movement of society, it was not a labour union, and if society started to unite, it was clear that they [communist authorities] would not catch and suffocate that number”.

Born in August 1945 in Rohatyn, before the war in the Stanisławów Voivodship, Poland, since 1945 the Soviet Union, now the Ivano-Frakivsk Voivodship in Ukraine. In September 1945 expatriated with his parents and siblings to Poland, he reached Chojnów and later Wrocław by rail. Upon his arrival, his father Michał, a printer by profession, took up a job in a printing house on Piotra Skargi Street, where he filed the first Polish newspaper Pioneer in lead. A graduate of the Vocational School of Printing in Wrocław, run by the Printing Art Society, he graduated in 1964 with the title of printer - hand-folder. In 1964 he started working in the Press Graphic Works, where he worked in book production for two years. In 1965, he was arrested and sentenced to four months in prison for telling a political joke in public. The prosecutor was trying to hold a political trial, the judge found the joke about Gomułka, the leader of the Polish United Workers’ Party, and Brezhnev, the leader of the USSR, a hooligan prank. In 1967, he worked on the creation of the Lower Silesian afternoon - the Evening of Wrocław. In his professional career he worked on such titles as: Nowiny Jeleniogórskie, Konkrety, Soldier of the People, Gazeta Robotnicza and many company newspapers. In 1980 he became a member of the newly established Solidarność, a participant in strikes. On December 13th 1981, he was engaged in work on Monitor Dolnośląski, a newspaper which was published in Lower Silesia until December 30th 1981, in place of press titles suspended after martial law was imposed. Professionally active until 1996, currently retired.