POLISH STUDENTS HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN. MODZELEWSKT —
A heavy curtain of silence has been lowered on the fate of the men who were condemned in Poland last May and this January for being involved in the writing and distribution of a document of 120 pages, a document constituting. a program, from the’ little that has leaked out. about it, that was Marxist and antibureaucratic.
Two: young men Jacek Kuron and Karol: Modzelewski. (who is said to have played an important role at the University of Warsaw during . the Polish October of 1956), and three university teachers, Romuald . Smiech, Kasimierz Badowski and Ludwig Haas, were condemned to.long prison terms. Haas, a member of the Trotskyist Polish organization before 1939, was deported at the time of the entry of the Soviet troops. and held for seventeen years in the Stalinist labor camps. Upon finally being released he again openly proclaimed himself to be a Trotskyist upon his: return ‘to Poland. -
But news about these men, who: represent the future of - Polana and the Communist movement, nevertheless finds its way into the. press. Upon returning from "Poland, Neal: Ascherson wrote in the London Observer [February 134]: os
“"A few weeks ago three university ‘teachers were sentenced to three yéars' imprisonment; they had been mixed up with a young man named Karol Modzelewski, a history lecturer who was last-summer jailed for three and a half years for disseminating papers judged . prejudicial to the State; during the trial he had appeared in court in handcuffs. Son of a party hero’and himself a keen party member, Modzelewski had defied orders and circulated plans -- based on a visit to the Italian Communist Party ~+ for freer debate within the party and for a new economic deal. The students: have not forgotten him, nor his ideas."
The legitimate indignation aroused by the sentencing of Daniel and Sinyavsky in Moscow should not’ be limited to the case of. these two writers. The’ Polish revolutionists must also be- “freed: from prison! - Lobe
According to the February 23 Le Monde, Peruvian military authorities have decided.to put the wives of six guerrilla fighters on.-trial. The women prisoners went. on. a hunger strike demanding a speedy trial and definite news about the fate of Guillermo Lobatén. ~
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