Growing up in the years of post-war trauma after the actual defeat, because after all an apparent liberation, we accepted the "small stabilization" of the People's Republic of Poland with ever deeper resignation - even when the social upheaval of 1956 in Poland or the Hungarian uprising gave rise to reviving hopes for the beginning of real liberation from communist oppression. They quickly turned into a stagnation of the powerless.

This is also how we mostly accepted the next (after the Hungarian) Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Therefore, with disbelief in the sense of any radical opposition, we passed by the self-immolation victim of Ryszard Siwiec in 1968. Nevertheless, something in us was moved to the depths of our being. And it has left an unfilled gap of disagreement with the sanctioned violence of imposed ideology. And in this fissure we began to recognize each other as people, however, internally free. That is why we need to start this archival local retrospective with the heroic act of Przemyśl native Siwiec - the founding act of our Przemyśl freedom.

The testament of Ryszard Siwiec

Transcript of a tape recorded by Ryszard Siwiec

SB reports

KRESOWIAK No. 2 – The "forgotten" text about Ryszard Siwiec

Message to the Czechs and Slovaks on the 21st anniversary of the invasion of the CSRS by the Warsaw Pact troops

Speech by the Ryszard Siwiec Memorial Committee to the City Council to commemorate his name

Maria Siwiec's letter to prof. Leon Kieres

Letter from Prof. Henryk Markiewicz to Adam Macedonian

Adam Macedonian's text about Ryszard Siwiec for the Polish Biographical Dictionary

"Ryszard Siwiec" A poem by WJ Lenski from the book Season for Silencee

Ryszard Siwiec, protesting against the invasion of Czechoslovakia, sets himself on fire during the nationwide harvest festival at the Dziesięciolecia Stadium in Warsaw - September 8, 1968