If the Walls Could Speak

Inside a Women's Prison in Communist Poland

Anna Müller

Illuminates the experience of women prisoners in postwar communist Poland
Draws on the personal testimonies of former political prisoners
Explores interrogation protocols and cell spy reports

If the Walls Could Speak

Inside a Women's Prison in Communist Poland

Anna Müller

Description

The specter of a prison punishment for even slight political offenses became an element of daily life in post-war Poland. In interwar Poland, imprisonment, especially for communists, had served as a rite of passage, endurance training, and a university teaching life skills. The post-war order brought a dramatic shift, as communists all over the region, often veterans of interwar prisons or war-time concentration camps, used incarceration sites as a way to mold the future. The prison system functioned as a tool to subjugate society and silence or destroy enemies- anti-communists as well as committed communists. Arrests, trials, and prison sentences directly and indirectly affected tens of thousands of people and instilled fear and insecurity in many more.

Many of those imprisoned as enemies of the new post-war Communist authorities were women. Some were jailed for their alleged collaboration with the Nazi resistance during the war, some for post-war activities in various civil and quasi-military groups, still others on the basis of their relationships with those already imprisoned. For some, there was evidence of their anti-state activities, while for many others the accusations were contrived.

In this work, Anna Müller unearths the prison lives of these women through their autobiographical writings, interrogation protocols, cell spy reports, and original interviews with former political prisoners. Her interviewees narrated their own versions of what happened during their arrests, interrogations, and confinement. They also explored their emotions: surprise, confusion, fear, and anger. Although their imprisonments interrupted their lives, separated them from families, and caused much suffering, the women reflected on how they refashioned themselves during their interrogations; applied their senses to orient themselves in the prison space; and used their bodies to gain control over themselves and as a means to exercise pressure on the authorities. The creativity that they displayed individually and collectively in their cells helped them rebuild a semblance of normal life inside prison walls despite the abuses inflicted by interrogation officers and guards.

By examining women's lives in the cells of Communist-era prisons, If the Walls Could Speak contributes to our understanding of coercion and resistance under totalitarian regimes.

If the Walls Could Speak

Inside a Women's Prison in Communist Poland

Anna Müller

Acknowledgments
List of Women Prisoners
Introduction
Chapter 1: War and the Penitentiary System
Chapter 2: On the Threshold: Arrest and Interrogation
Chapter 3: Learning One's Cell, Learning Oneself
Chapter 4: Prison Relationships: On Love, Trust, and Hostilities in a Prison Cell
Chapter 5: Boredom and Emptiness, or the Flow of Life in Confinement
Conclusion
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index

If the Walls Could Speak

Inside a Women's Prison in Communist Poland

Anna Müller

Author Information

Anna Müller is assistant professor of history and Frank and Mary Padzieski Endowed Professor in Polish/Polish American/Eastern European Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. She was formerly a curator at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk, Poland.

If the Walls Could Speak

Inside a Women's Prison in Communist Poland

Anna Müller

Reviews and Awards

Winner of the Oskar Halecki Award of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America

"[This] is a thorough and extremely well researched book. The author's ability to transcend the detail and to deliver a balanced and clear discussion on the subject, is truly commendable. This is worthy of comment because, as she admits, she became very fond of the women whom she interviewed and clearly her empathy with them enriched the narrative. To rise above these strong emotions to write a book on the prison system as much as it is on the women's experience, is impressive." -- Anita J. Prazmowska, European History Quarterly

"[Müller] depicts, with vivid detail and compassionate analysis, arrest and interrogation, adaptation to life in a cell, relationships among cellmates, and efforts to fill the emptiness of prison lifeâ..Scholars and students of post-war East European society, particularly those interested in women and gender, will discover much of value in this book, as will others who study the sociology of prison populations. Müller illuminates a dark period of Polish history, conveying not just the anguish of the females imprisoned by the Communist regime, but the women's strength, inventiveness, and tenacity." -- Katherine R. Jolluck , American Historical Review

"In a compelling and poignant narrative, Anna Müller shows how a group of women in the most difficult of circumstances were able to resist governmental oppression and assert their human dignity. This is history as it should be told and remembered."--Jeffrey Veidlinger, University of Michigan

"A powerful, original, and vivid story of Polish female political prisoners, who are defined not by their status as oppressed victims of communism, but by their humanity and individuality. Muller guides the reader through the drama of imprisonment, interrogation, and gendered rituals of everyday life in a cell with sensitivity and grace."--Malgorzata Fidelis, author of Women, Communism, and Industrialization in Postwar Poland

"Anna Müller's is an extraordinary study of women's prison experience in Stalinist Poland. It uses interviews, archival materials and deep historical insight to challenge the current model of presenting the lives and suffering of the 'doomed soldiers.' In an original and nuanced way, Müller illuminates the modes of survival and the post-prison dealing with the past by the neglected category of women-political prisoners. The book is original, very well written, insightful and compassionate."--Irena Grudzinska-Gross, Princeton University