The Ballad Of Janek From Gdynia by Maciej Chodźko-Zajko
Channel: andrzej2392
Date: 2021-08-14

The Ballad Of Janek From Gdynia
Trad., arr. M. Chodźko-Zajko & A. Smoleń
Lyrics - Tadek Jarski
℗ Solidarity With Solidarity
© Mistral Music
The author of the text (often considered anonymous) is Krzysztof Dowgiałło, the music was composed in 1980 by Mieczysław Cholewa, who, as it turned out later, was a secret collaborator of the SB.
According to historian Dr. Piotr Brzeziński, the ballad was written hot, right after the December tragedy, as evidenced by the discovery of the oldest manuscript from the beginning of 1971.
The ballad is inspired, among others, by the figure of an 18-year-old boy shot on December 17, 1970. On that day, after the strike had ended the day before, the Gdynia Shipyard crew was fired on their way to work in the morning.
The author of the ballad, not knowing the actual personal details of the dead, called him Janek Wiśniewski. As he recalled - at the very beginning, still in the vicinity of the Shipyard, he heard the shout "They killed Janek!". He added the surname Wiśniewski, heard elsewhere, and linked it to the dead person carried on the door, which already then became a symbol personifying the victims of the massacre [5]. It is assumed that the boy's name was Zbigniew Godlewski and he was shot during the clashes in the area of ​​the Gdynia Shipyard Fast City Railway station.