One of the biggest Solidarność meetings took place in 1981 in Gdansk. In 1980 the NSZZ Solidarność was the result of strikes. With the support of the Church it constituted, among other things, the first independent trade union in Eastern Europe and therefore an efficient opposition force.

After one year of imprisonment on account of „dissident activities“, Maciej Jasinski was allowed to return into his family. One can see him on the picture with his mother, his wife and his three years old daughter, Kasia.

A series of strikes whose centre was the dockyard of Gdansk, quickly laid hold of the whole country and led the way to the foundation of Solidarność. In August 1980 after slow and long-winded negociations, the government consented to the foundation of the independent trade union. But only one year later Solidarność was nevertheless forbidden within the scope of the marial law and many members were imprisoned. The tension between the State and the union is pictured here by the police car standing in front of the big stadium at Chorzów in Silesian, where a Solidarność meeting takes place.

The photograph shows the female crane operator and member of Solidarność, Anna Walentynowicz (1929-2010) at a union meeting. The female activist was already involved in the first big meeting of 1970 and again and again struggled against the political absurdities. This led to her dismissal without notice, which itself also triggered off the strikes leading the way to Solidarność.

Lech Wałęsa, arms up the air and a pipe in the hand, greets the participants of a Solidarność meeting. The future President of State and Peace Nobelist and Anna Walentynowicz belong to the most famous founder members of Solidarność.

The Solidarność postcard printed by Maciej Jasinski wishes a „Happy Easter 85“ with a caricature of Jerzy Urban. The latter was government speaker under Jaruzelski in the nineteen eighties and as a determined opponant of Solidarność, he became a beloved subject of caricatures for the oppositional underground movements.

The „Decyzja o internowania“ is the warrant of arrest with which the radiologist Maciej Jasinski was arrested at his surgery on the 30th of March 1982 und eventually jailed. It refers to Paragraph 42 of the decree of 12 December 1981, which declared martial law. Jasinski had run afoul of martial law by running an unauthorised printing press, and by duplicating and distributing “dissident“ leaflets. He was released from prison after exactly one year.

In 2005 Maciej received an honorary document from Solidarność, in which he is thanked for his „involvement in the setting up of the first independent structures of trade unions in the Silesian Medical Academy“. Further more it means, in the document, that „not only did the creation of the big movement Solidarność change our academy, but it moreover changed the history of Poland, Europe and the world“.

The front page of the paper that Maciej Jasinski printed himself: „Konkret“ shows a photograph of the first national Solidarność meeting of 1981 in Gdansk. The caption next to the tyran who is being carried by the people reads: „Every stop is a battle for power“.