It was a prolonged, early-morning blast of locomotive whistles in the Polish industrial city of Poznan that set off a revolt heard round the world. At 7 a.m. one day last week some 30,000 machinists, founders, fitters and laborers of all callings assembled at the locomotive, railroad-car and metallurgical factories on Poznan's outskirts. They were orderly but they were determined, and they had a grievance.
The workers at the Stalin Locomotive Works had been paid higher wages than most of their neighbors, because they were making military equipment. Three weeks ago, when the military orders were cut back for lack of raw materials, the Communist management slashed the workers' wages 30% to the starvation level normal for Polish workers (a month's work for a pair of leather shoes). The locomotive workers sent a delegation to Warsaw's Communist bureaucrats to plead their case, but, having little hope of relief, they organized a strike.
Into Riot. In orderly ranks in the early morning, they marched on the city (pop-359,000). All wore work clothes, some carried hammers on their shoulders. On the way to town they persuaded office workers and tram employees to join them. At 11 a.m., now a vast crowd, they gathered in front of City Hall. A Communist official tried to speak to them from the top of a public-address truck. A group of youths scrambled up onto the truck and began manhandling the Communist; most of the workers did not mix in; neither did the onlooking cops. Then a whisper went through the crowd: the workers' delegation was back in town and had been arrested.
What had been a peaceful mass meeting quickly became a riot. Three truckloads of police, who had been standing by, were mobbed and disarmed. The workers then roared off to Poznan jail to look for their delegates. In the jail they found no delegates, but plenty of political prisoners. They released the politicals and burned the prison records. Still looking for the missing delegation, they marched on the security police headquarters. Here they were driven back by fire hoses.
Then the inevitable happened. Said Eyewitness Kenneth Treherne, a British businessman: "There was shooting, and for a second everyone froze in his tracks. Then everyone tried to run in the same direction−away from the firing. I'm afraid many of them got trampled. I heard screams of women and men . . . " Other observers say the workers rallied, locked arms and began advancing on the security guards. The guards fired wildly.
Their first victim was a 16-year-old boy. The crowd lifted his dead body and carried it before them. A Polish red-and-white flag, dipped in his blood, was escorted by a proud and pretty Polish girl. Patriotic songs (Poland Is Not Yet Lost) were sung, but above the sound of marching and singing could be heard the chant: "Chleba, chleba, chleba!" (bread, bread, bread).