Several teenagers wanted to erect a monument to their idol in Bolesławiec after Lennon’s murder. To commemorate the artist whose music allowed them to transform their world into a land of freedom, all they had to do was close their eyes and listen...

They listened to Radio Luxembourg and loved the Beatles, rock ’n’ roll and blues. They partied at the Arietta club and had fun in the “murder hole”—aptly named Zacisze. At the beginning of the 1980s, they were young and very unruly. When someone had a grievance against someone else, he would leave the pub with him for a one-on-one fight. They proved their point with their bare fists. Afterwards, they would return to drink beer together, and that was how a friendship began.

A Sky of Marmalade and Sugar Clouds

Kazik Daremniak lived at the Zacisze beer hall, having been chosen by the city’s young people as the “mayor” of Bolesławiec. He was a colorful figure, a man lost and destroyed by alcohol. The “mayor” had one glass eye. When he wanted to drink beer for free, he played a trick on new customers at the beer hall. He would drop the eye into the beer. The guest would abandon the drink, and Kazik would happily drink it.

Sometimes in Bolesławiec’s Market Square, the boys would spread their arms and dance, feeling that they were floating up to a marmalade sky, where they ate sugar clouds. They were “the catchers in the rye,” boys from Gdańska, a street that had a bad reputation and commanded the respect of the socialist authorities.

During martial law, Gdańska was patrolled by a special reinforced unit. On Christmas Eve 1981, the women—the mothers and wives of the unruly boys—went out to the guards. They invited the soldiers to Christmas Eve dinner because they felt sorry for people who had to stand alone in the street on such a day. None of the guards dared enter the apartment. It was a pity, Sławek says, because nothing would have happened to them; those were the rules.

The “Jazz i Rock” music club—“Arietta” (at the Bolesławiec Cultural Center, now BOK-MCC)—and the Zacisze beer hall, also known as the House of Lords (on 1 Maja Street), no longer exist. Many of Sławek’s friends are gone too. Like John, they had their lives taken by assassins, although they were not shot with a gun like Chapman. They were killed by Kompot and Wóda. The heroin was Polish, but the vodka was no ordinary kind. At the familiar hangout, a grandmother had rye vodka from Pewex.

A lasting monument could have remained from those days of rock ’n’ roll, the Arietta club and 1980s Bolesławiec—a monument erected in Lennon’s memory. The idea was born in December 1980, on the day John was killed.

The Day John Lennon Was Killed

On the evening of December 8, John Lennon was entering his apartment in New York when his fan and assassin, Mark Chapman, shot him fatally. The musician’s death was reported the following day on the evening Dziennik Telewizyjny—the main news program of Polish television during the PRL era. The news was an exceptional occurrence on a program that broadcast only propaganda information concerning the communist authorities.

When Sławek learned of John’s death, he came to the Arietta club, where he met with his grieving friends. Each wore a picture of John in his lapel, marked with a black stripe. His friend Janek came to Arietta with his ears painted black as a sign of mourning. Sławek came up with the idea for the monument and asked his buddy “Żaba” what he thought. At first there was enthusiasm, but then they began wondering how to obtain the permits and who had to approve it. All roads led to the party secretary.

Johnny—A Boy from the People

Sławek does not remember who the secretary was at the time; the name has slipped his mind. He only remembers that he presented Lennon as a child of the proletariat who sang about freedom and equality for all the world’s citizens and fought oppression and the beating of dark-skinned people by wicked capitalists in the imperialist United States.

It was not for nothing that Sławek hosted a program at the Pegaz club in which he combined Lennon’s lyrics with quotations from the works of Vladimir Lenin. It was a joke that later proved very useful in his conversation with the secretary. Sławek played “Imagine” and then quoted Lenin, who wrote about abolishing borders and ownership in the world.

The secretary listened to the story of proletarian Lennon and admitted that he liked the Beatles, but he showed little enthusiasm. Sławek was to collect signatures, and then they would see. The secretary promised another meeting and suggested that requests from young people involved in building socialist Poland were considered more favorably than those from people unaffiliated with any party-approved organization.

Together with his friends, he went to Bolesławiec’s pubs and restaurants and collected three and a half thousand signatures. They were ready to join the Union of Rural Youth or the Polish Youth Union; Sławek no longer remembers which party organization he declared he would join for Lennon. Collecting signatures was easy because, in those days, Sławek walked around the city and knew everyone. Today, he passes people he does not know.

Bad Times for Monuments to Dreamers

They had a finished monument design. On a sandstone obelisk, there were to be glasses—Lennon glasses—also made of sandstone. One lens was to be cracked, and the frames were to bear the words “Give Peace a Chance.” It remains the title of a major Lennon and Paul McCartney hit. The monument was to stand in the small square by the Arietta club, where the parking lot by BOK-MCC is today, off Bankowa/Kościelna streets.

The monument was never built. The authorities said no, simply because they could. These were not favorable times for musicians and their fans. It was 1981, and winter was approaching.

The army took up positions on Gdańska. A friend of Sławek, stopped by a militia patrol, failed to show his papers, and the militiamen were found unconscious, with Kalashnikovs lying beside the disarmed officers. Six months later, the same young man was found beneath a bridge. The militia gave suicide by hanging as the official cause of death.

Sławek joined Solidarność. He never returned to the idea of building a monument to John Lennon—the great dreamer of a world without borders, politics or religion, a world in which all people live in peace because nothing exists there that could divide them.

The author sincerely thanks Sławek Szczerba for a beautiful story about the history of Bolesławiec. The interview was conducted in 2012.

Grażyna Hanaf