Bloodied but Still Unbowed

Grieving Solidarity supporters stage a silent protest

At 9 a.m. the solemn procession moved out of the gates of the giant steel mill at Nowa Huta, an industrial city less than ten miles from Cracow, and began to make its way across railroad tracks and cinder heaps to a hill overlooking the foundry. Many workers in the column carried their soot-smudged vermilion hard hats under their arms. Others held bunches of chrysanthemums or evergreen wreaths bedecked with ribbons bearing bold messages like IT is BETTER TO DIE STANDING UP THAN LIVE ON YOUR

KNEES. Along the streets of Nowa Huta, riot squads were out in force, prepared to move in with tear gas and water cannons if fresh demonstrations began.

But the crowds did not challenge the police. For many the rage that had spilled out in three days of rioting the week before to protest the banning of the independent trade union Solidarity was spent. In its place they felt only grief. What brought more than 10,000 of them together in a moving show of defiance was the funeral of Bogdan Wlosik, 20, a trainee electrician at the steel mill who had been shot in a scuffle with a plainclothesman. He was the 15th Pole known to have been killed since the imposition of martial law last December, and if Solidarity activists had no desire to confront the forces ranged against them in downtown Nowa Huta last week, they did use his burial rites to send a clear message to the military regime of General Wojciech Jaruzelski. Referring to imprisoned Leader Lech Walesa's refusal to cooperate with the government, a crudely printed sign outside the steel mill challenged workers with the reminder WALESA ENDURED, AND YOU?

At the slain youth's graveside they showed they were also not ready to give in. As Wlosik's wooden coffin was carried from the cemetery chapel, a couple unfurled the union's banner, symbolically splattered with red. Then mourners who had crammed between the gravestones raised their hands in victory signs. Workers, ranked shoulder to shoulder on the roof of a nearby building, picked up the salute, and even onlookers standing on a slag heap a quarter of a mile away joined in the silent gesture of protest. Said one mourner bitterly: "The only thing that is left to us now is the victory sign."

Solidarity organizers, however, read the mourners' show of defiance as a signal for the union to enter "a new phase of struggle." In a communique that reached Western newsmen in Warsaw Saturday, five underground leaders called for stepped up strikes and demonstrations, culminating in an "ultimate" nationwide walkout next spring. Charging that the regime was "deaf to the nation's needs," they urged workers to begin with a day-long work stoppage on Nov. 10, the second anniversary of Solidarity's registration in court. In Gdansk, Walesa's wife Danuta reported that her husband, who has always ruled out violent protest in the past, also approved of further demonstrations against the regime.

If union activists appear to have chosen a strategy of total confrontation with the government, Poland's military rulers are equally determined to meet any protests with an overwhelming show of might. The appeal from the underground was clearly a major gamble for Solidarity, since a poor response would seriously sap its influence among Polish workers.

Meanwhile, the exodus of Poles continues. American officials confirmed last week that Andrzej Treumann, the highest ranking Polish banker in the U.S., asked for political asylum during the summer. As North American representative for Poland's Bank Handlowy, Treumann helped negotiate the rescheduling of Warsaw's $27 billion debt to the West.

In a daring night flight across the Baltic Sea the day before the funeral in Nowa Huta, 15 adults and five children defected to Sweden in a single-engine biplane used for crop dusting. After taking off from a rural airport near the Baltic port city of Szczecin, the pilot managed to avoid detection by turning off his lights and flying at an altitude of about 300 ft. Explained the happy but exhausted Poles after a safe landing near the city of Malmo: "We are all Solidarity members. That is why we fled." Most others had no choice but to express their defiance quietly at home.

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