Henryka Krzywonos-Strycharska (1953)

Henryka Krzywonos-Strycharska (née Januszkiewicz) was born on 27 March 1953 in Olsztyn (Warmińsko-Mazurskie Voivodeship). She grew up in a troubled home. Her father died when she was 13 years old. Her mother had a drinking problem as a result of which Henryka was sent to a children’s home, where she spent four years. When she returned home, she became responsible for providing for her family.

Henryka lived in the port workers’ district of Gdańsk. While still a teenager, she worked very hard to take care of her home and her younger sister. Initially, she was employed at the Port of Gdańsk Authority, where she first worked as a cleaner. With time, however, her responsibilities gradually expanded. After hours, she also worked as an office typist. In 1971 she passed, before the State Board of Examiners in Gdańsk, an extramural exam covering the curriculum of the seven-year Primary School for Workers. In 1973 she became a tram driver and worked at the Tram Municipal Transport Branch of the Voivodeship Public Transport Enterprise in Gdańsk. Between October 1978 and September 1979, she worked as an operator of lifting equipment at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, and then in October 1979, she returned to the position of tram driver at the Tram Municipal Transport Branch of the Voivodeship Public Transport Enterprise in Gdańsk. She was known as “Henia the tram driver”, whereas she referred to herself a “normal, down to earth woman”. She drove the no. 3 and no. 15 trams that brought labourers from the Lenin Shipyard to work.

One thing that most certainly influenced her future activities was the fact that she gained most of her professional experience during the years of economic downturn in the second half of the 1970s. At the time she had already gotten copies of the underground journal Robotnik, but she did not consider becoming involved in the opposition movement because she felt responsible for her mother and her younger sister.

In August 1980 she joined the strike of the Coast public transport system. Henryka herself has said that, at the time, she did not know much about politics and was still wet behind the ears when it came to those issues. On 15 August 1980, 27 years old Henryka Krzywonos-Strycharska stopped the no. 15 tram that she was driving near the Baltic Opera in Gdańsk. This event is often described as the beginning of the public transport system strike in Gdańsk that took place during the August events, even though, in fact, bus drivers had already started the sit-down strike earlier, after four o’clock in the morning. When Henryka Krzywonos stopped her tram, she went on to say the sentence that would later become famous:

“This tram isn’t going any further. We’ve stopped because the shipyard has also stopped.”

As she recalls in her interviews, she was very afraid of the passengers’ reaction. She was driving labourers to work, and nurses to the medical university. To her surprise, however, people started to clap and everyone supported her decision to go on strike. She found that reaction very empowering, and it made her feel certain that she had done the right thing. Other trams started to line up behind her tram. Workers of the Voivodeship Public Transport Enterprise (WPK) and the Motor Transport Company (PKS) decided to establish the headquarters of their joint strike at the bus depot on Karl Marx street, where the sit-down strike of bus drivers had been ongoing since the morning. One day later on 16 August, when an agreement with the management was singed at the Gdańsk Shipyard and Lech Wałęsa announced the end of the strike, together with Anna Walentynowicz and Alina Pieńkowska, Henryka urged shipyard workers to continue with the solidarity strike to support the demands of other enterprises.

Due to her feisty personality and courage to express her opinion, she was elected a member of the Praesidium of the Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk and participated in negotiations with the Government. She recalls that those discussions were not easy because the representatives of the Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee had to negotiate with very experienced party activists. In September 1980 she became a member of the Praesidium of the Inter-Enterprise Founding Committee “Solidarność” Gdańsk; however, she was removed from this position due to a disagreement within her company.

During martial law, she helped to organize assistance for interned people; she was also involved in the distribution of independent publications. At the beginning of 1982, she was beaten unconscious for her opposition activity and suffered a miscarriage as a result. One week after that event, she was deprived of her work and had to leave Gdańsk. Between September 1980 and March 1981, she was under continuous surveillance of the secret police (an operation with the code name “Tabor”). She recalls that the repressions continued until 1988, when the secret service searched her house for the last time while she was away. She managed to survive due to assistance in kind provided not only by her acquaintances, but also by strangers. She initially lived in Mazury and later in Szczecin, where she started to work at the Wiskord Chemical Plant. In 1986, when she learnt that she had cancer, she returned to Gdańsk and was employed at the Education Centre for Foreigners. In many interviews she has stated that ever since her signing of the August Agreement, she has been doing the same thing, namely, helping people as much as she can.

Today, she is the only surviving female signatory of the August Agreement (Alina Pieńkowska, a friend of Henryka Krzywonos-Strycharska, died in 2002, and Anna Walentynowicz was a victim of the Smolensk plane crash in 2010).

In 1987 she married Krzysztof Strycharski, with whom she adopted and raised twelve children – first, starting in 1989, as a foster family, and later, beginning in 1994, as a Residential Foster Home. In 2004 she graduated from the Continuous Education Centre for Adults in Gdańsk. Since 2015, she has been a Member of the Polish Parliament. She was a candidate from the Platforma Obywatelska list in 2015, and from Koalicja Obywatelska list in 2019 and 2023.

The extensive activities of Henryka Krzywonos-Strycharska, which have been aimed at assisting other people, have been recognized many times. Henryka Krzywonos-Strycharska has been awarded with numerous medals and titles, including the title of Honorary Citizen of the City of Gdańsk in 2000, and the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta in 2006. In 2009 the Congress of Polish Women granted her the title of “Polish Woman of the Bi-Decade”.

Transcript 

Henryka Krzywonos was born in 1953 in Olsztyn. She came from a poor family, and she had a troubled childhood. Due to her family’s dire economic situation she had to work from a very young age. She often shifted jobs until she finally became a tram driver. She drove the no. 3 and no. 15 trams that brought laborers from the Lenin Shipyard to work in Gdańsk. She was reluctant to get involved in politics until she joined the strike of the Coast’s public transport in August 1980. On August 15th, 1980, Henryka Krzywonos stopped the no. 15 tram that she was driving near the Baltic Opera in Gdańsk. This event is described as the beginning of the public transport strike in Gdańsk that took place during the August events. The strike ended with the signing of the August Agreements, which included the government’s consent to legalize the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union “Solidarity”. In September 1980 she became a member of the Praesidium of the Inter-Enterprise Founding Committee “Solidarność” Gdańsk. During the martial law that was imposed, she was persecuted, intimidated, and beaten, she lost her job, she was forced to go into hiding to escape arrest, but she never stopped helping people. She returned to Gdańsk in 1986. She is the only surviving female signatory of the August Agreements and since 2015 she has been a Member of the Polish Parliament.

Script/Narration: Zuzanna Grabska, Patryk Ciałoń, Julia Lisowska

Coordination: Manos Avgeridis, Ioanna Vogli
Audio editing – Mastering: Alexey Arseny Fokurov
Recorded at Antart Studios, Athens