Terror Disguised in Civilian Clothes
An intimate testimony from May 30, 1960. For Bronisława Raszkiewicz, state violence was not an abstraction, but a painful echo of her own past. Having survived the trauma of uprooting in 1946, when she crossed the country in cattle cars into the unknown, she believed she had found a definitive refuge to build her life. However, on Sunday, May 30, 1960, upon stepping off the bus on Kasprowicza Street in Zielona Góra, she came face to face with a new nightmare: thousands of citizens defending the Catholic House from the siege of the communist regime. This building, protected by Father Kazimierz Michalski, was the social and spiritual pillar of the community—a vital space that the authorities were determined to confiscate to silence faith and put an end to citizens' gatherings outside the Party's control.
Witnessing the events
As an eyewitness to the Zielona Góra Events, Bronisława witnessed the excessive brutality of the ZOMO units, brought in from all over the region to crush the peaceful resistance. Amidst the chaos, suffocated by tear gas and surrounded by torn-up cobblestones and burning cars, the image that broke her the most was the internal betrayal: militiamen disguised in civilian clothes indiscriminately beating women, men, and children. For a woman who had rebuilt her life from the ashes of war, witnessing that scene on the streets of her city was the definitive proof that terror had not been left behind, but was now walking disguised through the streets of her new home.