18; released on the late afternoon of Jan. 19, they rushed to their polling places and stood in line, but few of them got inside before the polls were closed at 7 p.m. In Kieke, 1,000 PSL members were in jail on Jan. 19. One polling place in Cracow was closed early because the UB discovered that everyone was voting for the PSL-list number 4. In another place there was a block-long queue ; an official shouted that those who wanted to vote for list 3 could form a separate queue and would get preference. Only a half-dozen moved. Also in Cracow, it is estimated that prior to election day about 60,000 names were stricken off the registration list of eligible voters. This included, a priest told me, most of the Catholic clergy as well as known followers of Zygmunt Zulawski, independent Socialist who, refused a license to form a party, ran as a candidate of the PSL. In the Radzyn district the inhabitants of 96 villages were all refused the right to vote on the charge that these villages were controlled by the underground bandits. In a village near Zywiec the Security Police seized the peasants' livestock and they were warned that if Mikolajczyk won, they would never see their cows and horses again. The news of this was spread throughout that district to frighten the peasants. Perhaps the most effective device of all was to compel all workers of a factory or institution to gather early on Jan. 19, listen to a harangue, and then march, accompanied by soldiers, with banners flying but heads hanging, to martial music, to the polls, where they were given their number 3 ballots and rushed through the miserable farce. At Torun the PPS paper RobotnikPomorski printed the names of 30 prominent persons who had not been politically active as sponsors of the Government Bloc number 3. The list included the Dean of the Cathedral and 1 8 other clergymen. Enquiries brought forth the fact that a week earlier the Mayor had called a meeting of these 30, urged them to support the Bloc; as soon as he had finished his speech, a stooge arose and said of course everyone present was a patriotic Pole who would vote for democracy and list 3. The meeting was then immediately adjourned before anyone could protest, l4 BibliotecaGino Bianco
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