The case of Stanisław Pyjas exhibition in Krakow

The case of Stanisław Pyjas exhibition in Krakow

On May 7, 1977 in Krakow, due to the Security Service, Stanisław Pyjas, a 24-year-old fifth-year student of Polish philology at the Jagiellonian University, a poet and an anti-communist opposition activist, died in mysterious circumstances. His death shocked the environment, circle of friends and family, and initiated the activity of the opposition movement in Krakow. On May 15, 1977, the establishment of the Student Solidarity Committee in Kraków (SKS) was announced.

Considering all the alleged circumstances of the tragic death of the student Stanisław Pyjas on the night of May 6-7, 1977 at 7 Szewska Street in Krakow, five attempts to resume and discontinue the investigation by the prosecutor's office and the Institute of National Remembrance, including the exhumation of his remains in 2010, After which the examiners three times confirmed the thesis about death as a result of a fall from a height - the manner and circumstances of this tragedy remain in the sphere of guesswork and innuendo. What is certainly known is that Stanisław Pyjas actively cooperated with the Workers' Defense Committee, he and a group of his friends had been investigated by the SB at least a year earlier. The surveillance of the murdered lasted until the last moments of his life, so his death was not accidental.

There is a broad context of the so-called the cases of Stanisław Pyjas: who was this very conscious young man at the time, or his senseless death, which, as a result of a hasty investigation, generated other deaths in mysterious circumstances (in order to cover his tracks), such as the death of Stanisław Pietraszka or Marian Węclewicz. In addition, the case of anonymous letters written by SB officers in Krakow, which Stanisław Pyjas and Bronisław Wildstein received, appeared as another possible motive for his murder. Moreover, the case of Lesław Maleszka - as it turned out, TW Ketman, who was under surveillance of the Krakow SKS - and other important facts, towards which it is impossible to be indifferent and which increase the puzzles of the case and its drama.

The premise and goal of the proposed multimedia exhibition is to restore the memory of Stanisław Pyjas. In the perspective of today's devaluation of superior values ​​such as truth, courage, honesty, individualism, nonconformity or respect for other people - opposed to hypocrisy, cynicism, servility and opportunism - the exhibition will be an attempt to sanction the former as a determinant of action and norm in social relations. In times of crisis of democratic values, paradoxically those for which Stanisław Pyjas gave his young life, it seems important to recall his adamant, courageous and committed attitude.                                                    /Dorota Nieznalska/