Suicidal declarations. Overproduction of medical certificates. Even breaking limbs. Potential recruits were ready to do anything to get out of the draft. What worked best and what couldn't ... but was it tried anyway?
Basic military service in the People's Republic of Poland was associated with coercion, thoughtlessness and ideological brainwashing. It had already begun with an oath, the rota of which included, inter alia, an oath to maintain fraternal relations with the Soviet Army. Of course, there was also a "wave". As a result, two years of service in the army and three years in the navy seemed to many young people as completely wasted time. In order not to wear boots, various methods were used. Pretty desperate sometimes.
It was best to "get sick"
The most popular method of avoiding service in the Polish People's Army was to simulate a serious illness. The fantasy of the conscripts was great. She was supported by friendly doctors who issued the necessary certificates. Sometimes it was enough to say, “Doctor, I'm perfectly normal, I just don't want to go to the army. I am very scared, I have such terrible fears and I stay awake at night because of it ”. The request was of course supported with a suitable gift.
This is how the leader of Czerwony Gitar, Krzysztof Klenczon, avoided conscription. As the musician's widow, Alicja Klenczon, reveals in the book Krzysztof Klenczon. The story of one acquaintance , the musician's father arranged for a postponement by using his connections at WKU. The doctor awarded the boy the health category D. All because Krzysztof blackmailed his father, saying that if they put him in boots, he would commit suicide.
Krzysztof Klenczon avoided conscription thanks to his father's acquaintance at WKU.
Better to a psychiatrist than to the army
Certificates of treatment for heart, kidney, spine and neurological diseases were desirable. Mental illnesses were especially appreciated - due to the difficulties in verifying them. The so-called "yellow papers" guaranteed, in most cases, the avoidance of tax collection. They tried to get them in every way. How it looked in practice, 48-year-old Piotr recalls:
I went to a psychologist and the woman started making up some phobias for me that I had never heard of in my life. I took the papers, she made me a medical history of several years, I additionally left her a good drink and went to the WKU. At that time, no one in my milieu imagined putting on a uniform and exercising jointly on maneuvers on a training ground with the Russians. So I was trying to get as much as possible.
Piotr managed to avoid the service. Others did not hesitate to go even further, even agreeing to stay in psychiatric hospitals . In 1984, Andrzej "Kobra" Kraiński, who later became the leader of the Kobranocka group, found his way to the closed branch in Toruń. He was running away from conscription to the army. It was there that he met the head of Andrzej Michorzewski. Together they founded the band Latający Pisuar, from which Kobranocka was born.
I can't go to the military because I have bedwetting
Half-measures were also used, which, although not exempt from the duty of service, allowed to postpone its execution. This was the way of documenting visits to anonymous alcoholics and stays in a sobering-up center. The price also included certificates of poor eyesight and hearing. As a last resort, they were rescued by presenting a medical certificate for bedwetting at the Military Committee for Supplements.
Sometimes it was just the right amount of documentation. For health reasons, one of the interlocutors from the discussion forum "Have you been in the army?" This is how he recalled the "deliberations" of the conscription commission:
I haven't been to the army. I got the E category on the first commission during the communist regime. I didn't have to worry too much thanks to widely documented kidney problems from my childhood. Although it was and passed, the pile of discharge cards from hospitals, 20 cm thick, made a sufficient impression (they did not even see it - the one on the top and the number of them was enough) ...
Needles, razor blades, car door
When there were no appropriate medical certificates, it was necessary to reach for ( nomen omen ) sharper ways. The desperate even resorted to self-mutilation. Initially, it took quite mild forms. For example, small punctures, characteristic of drug addicts, were made with a needle on their hands.
For some time, an effective method of getting out of the military was punctures on the hands of drug addicts. Illustrative photo.
According to the accounts of the interested parties who used the needle method, military doctors were fooled for some time. Later, the trick was deciphered, so more and more radical ways were resorted to. People were cut with razor blades and even one's limbs were broken . The results have been tragic. In the late 1980s, a young man tried to break his arm by putting it in the door of a big Fiat. But colleagues snapped them too tight, which led to an open fracture and serious complications of bone fusion.
The impact of compulsory conscription on the level of education of the society
The second most popular way to avoid military service was to… get an education. Continuing education at college or university allowed for a delay of three, four or even five years. No wonder that in People's Poland, post-secondary schools, post-secondary teacher training seminars and universities have become popular among male youth.
It is not difficult to find a grain of truth in the anecdote that the desire to avoid military service increased the level of education in the People's Republic of Poland.
The studies paid off exceptionally, because having a master's degree entitles him to shorter service and obtain the rank of cadet (and in the perspective of a second lieutenant). The truthful anecdote says that the forced conscription in the People's Republic of Poland provided the country with educated people. Many people went to university just to avoid joining the army.
The stay at the universities was extended as much as possible. Perpetual students, studying for seven or eight years, and sometimes even longer, functioned there. After completing one study, the second or doctoral studies were started immediately. All this just to wait out the sensitive period. The most persistent, as the current Minister of Science and Higher Education, Jarosław Gowin, confessed, managed to study until they reached the age exempt from being drafted into the army. "We did everything, we bent over backwards to avoid military service," confessed the politician.
At a box concert, from a concert to the army
Young citizens of People's Poland also resorted to more creative ways of signing off from the army. There were frequent cases of avoiding receiving a summons at WKU. “A lady friend at the post office immediately entered the appropriate column « missed calls » "- recalls one of the would-be recruits. Sometimes they even hid from the Military Internal Service, which supplied reluctant conscripts to units. As the proverb of that time used to say:"And he was sitting in the nursery so that the draft would not find out." They stayed overnight with family or friends, sometimes in a park or on the roof of a block of flats.
Some changed their appearance. "After returning to Krakow, I shaved my beard ..." - recalls Dr. Karol Życzkowski, author of "Notes of Private". They also traveled to other cities or used a false surname. This is how another member of Czerwony Gitar, Henryk Zomerski, hid from the army.
In order to avoid recruitment, the bassist of Czerwony Gitar, Henryk Zomerski, was hiding under a changed name. It didn't do much. Above Zomerski in the photo from 2006.
The musician performed under the fictitious name of Janusz Horski. He did not go by bus with his friends to the concerts, but he came by his own car. During his performances, he played bass hidden in a big box . His efforts, however, ended in failure. All because he was in love with a girl who was not accepted by his mother. So Zomerski's mother informed WKU where to find her son. The bassist was picked up by WSW straight from the Czerwony Gitar concert at Dom Chłopa in Warsaw.
To the army instead of Italy
Another practiced solution was going abroad. "I had a friend who passed to the University of Warsaw only to apply for a passport after passing the first exams and escape to the States" - recalls one of the veterans of military evasion in the Polish People's Republic.
Życzkowski, today a physicist from the Jagiellonian University, wanted to use this method. The military asked for him in the late 1980s, when he was a freshly qualified doctor. This is how he describes his plans in Private Notes:
My friends [...] persuaded me to go skiing together in Italy. [...] However, in order to obtain a passport in Poland, one had to first obtain permission from the army. So with an elegantly written application and a copy of the invitation from Italy, I marched to the Military Supplementary Commission (WKU). Maybe the military authorities shouldn't have been reminded of their existence, but I thought my papers hadn't returned from Zegrze to Kraków yet.
I was sorely disappointed. When a week after submitting the application for permission to travel to Italy, I reported to the Supplementary Command, the warrant officer I already knew said that there was no permission to leave for me, but he would give me a ticket to the SWP for consolation [Reserve Officer Cadets Schools - ed. ed.] for the upcoming May draft …
Get out at any cost
Those unlucky people who did not manage to avoid incarnation tried at all costs to get out of the army. There was no picking up here either. Some methods were described by Antoni Pawlak in his once famous "Military Book":
They're escaping. Everyone is trying to get out of here by possible means. From primitive, short-term attempts to jump over the wall, to more sophisticated ways. Most often by a psychiatric institution.
MARK Six months in service. For some reason, they don't want to let him home on leave. At night, in the common room, he demonstratively cuts himself with a razor blade, or rather - as he himself said - with a moj. It cuts on wrists, breasts, stomach and cheeks. We have a crazy fight with him for a razor blade, because he wants to kill others as well. Monthly follow-up and home.
Even after young people joined the army, they kept figuring out how to get out of it.
ANDRZEJ II He cut his wrists a week before his oath. Before that, he had written some applications to convert his military service to five years in prison. He was a typical "git" convinced that prison, in addition to ennobling him, would be easier.
RYSZARD All year long bed-wetting that he did not actually have. In the end he succeeded, he was given a one-year postponement. This boy gave me a kind of sincere admiration. He spent the whole year trying to systematically pour under him at night. Mocked and beaten by his colleagues, he did not give up.
Today, when we have a professional army, we are not threatened with compulsory conscription. Well, unless the Law and Justice decides to restore basic military service. Similar demands keep appearing here and there ...