Funeral held of Solidarity co-founder Marian Jurczyk
PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge
04.01.2015 15:22
One of the founders of the Solidarity movement, Marian Jurczyk, has been laid to rest in Szczecin, where he died on 30 December, aged 79.
The funeral of Marian Jurczyk. Photo: PAP/Marcin Bielecki
He was posthumously decorated with the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Reborn Poland by President Bronislaw Komorowski.
Senator Jan Rulewski, himself a prominent Solidarity activist, said during the ceremony that the August 1980 strike in the Gdansk Shipyard would never have been if it had not been preceded by the strike in Szczecin, and that there would have been no Lech Wałęsa without Marian Jurczyk.
Jurczyk was the strike leader in the Szczecin Shipyard in August 1980 and signed an accord with the government a day before the Gdansk strike ended.
During the first Solidarity congress in the autumn of 1981 he lost to Wałęsa the election for union leadership.
After the imposition of martial law, he spent over two years in prison. A staunch anti-communist, he was firmly against Solidarity’s participation in the round table talks with the regime in 1989 and a year later founded ‘Solidarity 80’, a trade union which remained in opposition to Solidarity.
In 1997, Marian Jurczyk was elected a senator and later served for several years as mayor of Szczecin. He withdrew from political activity in 2006. (mk)