Drawing on autobiographical writings, oral histories, interrogation
protocols, and cell spy reports, If the Walls Could Speak focuses
on the lives of women in prison in postwar communist Poland. Some
were jailed for their alleged collaboration with the Nazis during
the war, some for postwar activities in various civil as well as
quasi-military groups, still others for allegedly dubious
activities on the basis of their relationships with those already
imprisoned. In some cases, there was some evidence of their
anti-state activities; in many others, the accusations were absurd
and based on cumbersome definitions of "anti-state." Anna Muller
shows how these women struggled to resist identifying themselves as
"prisoners" and regain their voices through a dialogue between the
"self," a hostile prison world, and the world outside, which, as
time passed, became increasingly menacing. The prison system in
postwar Poland functioned as a tool to subjugate society and
silence or destroy enemies-anti-communists, but also committed
communists. Arrests, trials, and prison sentences directly and
indirectly affected tens of thousands of people. Imprisonment
stigmatized both prisoners and their families, inspiring fear and
insecurity. Out of fear, worry for their loved ones, or a need to
act, women prisoners took on different roles and personalities to
protect themselves and create a semblance of normality, despite
abuses and prison confinement. They used words to (re)create
themselves during an interrogation; they used their senses to
orient themselves in the spatial organization of the prison and to
create a feeling of security; they used their physicality as a
confirmation of their gender identity and a means of exerting
pressure on the authorities; and they attempted to build a communal
cultural, social, religious, and educational life by drawing on
patterns they had acquired in their lives outside of prison.
Following the trajectory of women's life stories-from the moment of
interrogation, through the attempt to create themselves in a cell,
to the post-prison reordering of their old lives-this book reveals
how the prison cell in postwar Poland became a laboratory of human
heterogeneity, of reconstruction, and reinvention of the self, and
how life in a Stalinist prison adds to our understanding of
coercion and resistance under totalitarian regimes.
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