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| Marzec 1968 Protests in Poland. |
Beginning on March 8th, 1968, in Warsaw, student protests began to fill the streets. There was a spirit of reform and freedom felt in solidarity with the ongoing Prague Spring in neighboring Czechoslovakia. However, the government reaction was swift and severe.
The participants of the 8 March rally were met with violent beatings from ORMO volunteer reserve and ZOMO riot squads just as they were about to go home. The disproportionately brutal reaction of the security forces appeared to many observers to be a provocation perpetrated to aggravate the unrest and facilitate further rounds of repression, in the self-interest of political leaders. [Wikipedia]
In the following days, the protests grew in number and frequency, spilling over into the cities of Kraków, Lublin, Gliwice, Katowice, Łódź, Wrocław, Gdańsk, and Poznań. The reactionary forces of the government turned the crackdown into an anti-Zionist campaign, which resulted in a wave of Jewish refugees who fled Poland.
Sources:
Polish Political Crisis of 1968, Wikipedia.
"A Rally in Warsaw Marks Suppression of 1968," by John Darnton, in New York Times (9 Mar 1981).
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