My comment on the article in the The Times We can never be sure we’d be the good guys by David Aaronovitch, January 1 2020.
Lech Borkowski 2 January 2020
Many of the comments following the article indicate an under-appreciation of the evolution of evil. Evil is alive and in rude health.
Here is my proposition to The Times and to the readers of this article. Here is an opportunity to do something good and to resist the forces of evil. Please read and propagate this example.
My wife Małgorzata Głuchowska, a pianist and a very successful piano teacher in the State School of Music in Zielona Góra in Poland, was fired in by the authorities in 2015, using a false statement issued by the Occupational Medical Service in Poland. This statement declares that she is unable to perform her job anymore due to some unspecified psychological issues. The Communists imposed a labour code in Poland in 1974 requiring each employee to undergo periodic health checks. This requirement has not been abolished after 1990. It was even quietly extended by the Minister of Health ordinance in 1996, stating, in translation,
“Physician carrying out the prophylactic examination may extend its scope to include additional specialist consultative examinations and additional examinations, and can also establish an earlier date of the next examination than specified in methodical instructions, if he finds it necessary for a precise evaluation of the state of health of a prospective employee or an existing employee.”
It seems ok, no? Who would object to free medical consultations?
The problem is that these medical examinations are as free as in prison or concentration camp. Even in Auschwitz there was free medical care. Periodic medical consultations were used to determine who is unfit for work and whose employment in the camp should be terminated, followed by a disinfecting ‘bath’ in the gas chambers. To have a job and to live was not a right, it was a privilege. Similarly, in Poland today, to have a job and to continue as a visible member of society, even if a repressed and harassed one, is a privilege. This privilege can be revoked at any time. The Occupational Medical Service was used to administer social death.
This is today’s firing squad. The physicians employed in the Regional Center of Occupational Medicine in Zielona Góra, Wojewódzki Ośrodek Medycyny Pracy, committed a crime for political reasons. Each of them is bound by the officially declared law and by the professional oath. Yet, they know that there is the other undeclared officially set of rules and this is where their allegiance lies. The state is a criminal state. Its functionaries are both representatives of the state and members of organised crime.
We were both fired for who we are, for standing up for human dignity, for the officially declared law, for common sense, for basic truth, for human rights. I worked as an associate professor of physics at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. I was fired in 2015 for political reasons as well.
We wrote many letters to the top authorities in Poland and to the European Parliament, with no result. It seems that the Continent is overflowing with defenders of human rights. Yet, when the real test comes, you are on your own. No one, including those being paid to defend law and rights, asked for more information.
We have a website devoted to a larger project. You can navigate to it via my Twitter account. We also have presence on the Researchgate portal.
@LechSBorkowski