Even if these people were doing it all in the name of the best and noblest cause they would be destroying that cause with their misdeeds. to decide that the act of signing the declaration is in itself morally indifferent. It is not. Every loyalty declaration is an evil; and a declaration that has been forced out of you is an evil which you were compelled to commit, although it may, at times, be a lesser evil. So this act sometimes deserves understanding, always compassion, but never praise. There are at least a few reasons for this. First of all, dignity does not allow it. Impotence in the face of armed evil is probably the worst of human humiliations. When six hulks pin you to the ground, you are helpless. But you do not want to give up your natural right to dignity: you are not going to reach any agreements with the ruffians, you are not going to make any commitments. When they take you from your house, beat you with all their might, burn your eyes with tear gas, break open your front door with a crowbar and wreck your furniture right in front of your family, when in the middle of the night they drive you to the police station in handcuffs and order you to sign statements, then your ordinary instinct for self-preservation and your basic sense of human dignity will make you say NO. Because even if these people were doing it all in the name of the best and noblest cause they would be destroying that cause with their misdeeds. t this point you still know little. Only when, a few hours later, they drive you in the direction of Bialoleka (you will look around with curiosity, for previously you knew this road only as far as good old Mokotow prison) will you hear on the prison van’s radio, as your teeth chatter from the cold (these circumstances will later be called “ humane conditions"), that war has been declared on your nation. It was declared by people who on behalf of this nation govern, proclaim, sign international agreements—the same people who publicly held out a conciliatory hand while secretly issuing orders to hunt us in the night. And then you really know for sure that you will not make a gift of your loyalty declaration to these people, for they are incapable of any loyalty whatsoever. And you still don't know what this war means; you still don’t know by what methods factories and steelworks, shipyards and mines will be assaulted; you still don’t know about the “ bloody Wednesday" in the Wujek mine [where police killed 9 miners while breaking a strike]; but you do know one thing already: to sign this declaration would be to negate yourself, to wipe out the meaning of your life; to betray the people who have faith in you; to betray your friends who are dispersed in different prisons—who have been sentenced and interned; to betray the friends who are being sought by the police and who are in hiding; to betray all those who will stand up for you—with a flier in Cracow or Gdahsk, a rally in Paris or New York. The face of Zbyszek who is in hiding, of Edek who has been sentenced, of Sewek hurrying down a Parisian boulevard have not yet begun to flash before your eyes. Nothing is fixed yet, the door is still open before you, you still have a choice. But you know already—your instincts are telling you—that to forsake your dignity is not a price worth paying to have the prison gates opened for you. And so here is the second reason: the demands of common sense. Reaching agreements of any kind with people who treat the very concept of “ agreements” completely arbitrarily, who regularly go back on their promises, and for whom lies are their daily bread, is contrary to common sense. After all, you have never known anyone who has had any dealings with the agents of the security services and has not felt cheated. To these people, with their lifeless but shifting eyes, with their minds that are dull but skilled in torture, with their defiled souls that yearn for social approval, you are only raw material to work with. They have their own particular psychology: they believe that anyone can be talked into anything (in other words, everyone can be either bought or intimidated). To them it is only a matter of the price to pay or the pain to inflict. Although they act according to routine, your every stumble, your every fall gives meaning to their lives. Your capitulation is no mere professional achievement for them—it is their raison d' etre. And so you find yourself engaged in a philosophical debate with them about the meaning of your life, about the meaninglessness of their lives, about giving meaning to 32 Clinton St. Quarterly— Spring, 1987
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