What I saw, however, surpassed all my anticipations and fears. It was not a free election, it was not an election at all, but organised violence over the elector and his conscience. THE SPEAKF.R: Citizen Deputy, I must call you to order. ZuLAWSKr: I do not want to invoke any obligations, whether those of Yalta, Moscow or Potsdam, because I hold that every election must be free, honest and clean, -otherwise there is no need to hold it at all and to create the fiction of a " directed " or a" people's " democracy. I shall not even insist on these terrible elections. I shall only quote a few examples which I witnessed myself. In Cracow thousands and thousands of people were struck off the electoral lists under the pretext that they had collaborated with the Germans or with the "underground." One of those struck off was my son, who had spent three years in the concentration camps of Oswiecim and Buchenwald. His name was restored to the list only after he had threatened to bring a libel action. My daughter-in-law was ordered to sign a declaration to the effect that she would vote openly for the Government, and my niece, who is living with me, was threatened with eviction from my flat, dismissal from employment and even arrest, with not even the semblance of decency beirig preserved. The electoral agent covering my list and my comrades who stood as candidates with me were arrested simply for the purpose of terrorizing them. I was not allowed to publish even one single electoral appeal and the printing house, in breach of an agreement, stopped prindng the Polish Peasant Party weekly " Piast " which had co-operated with me. The police requisitioned all private cars and buses for the purposes of the Bloc's electoral campaign. On election day all those working in factories or institutions were ordered to assemble and, under the control of an appointed leader, were marched to the polling stations where they were forced to make a great show of voting for No. 3 (the list of the Gov:emment bloc), with complete disregard for the article of the Constitution which lays down that " the Sejm shall be composed of deputies elected in universal and secret suffrage." In spite of this, militiamen would 48 Biblioteca Gino Bianco
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