Three employees of the Office of Planning and Production at the Stalowa Wola Steelworks: 39-year-old Jozef Bauer, 31-year-old Wanda Dyzyng and 23-year-old Barbara Pieczerak, hurriedly write dramatic letters on pieces of tracing paper. While replacing the door in the office, they slip a few sheets of paper into the wall with a message for posterity. Although work at the company is going on as normal, they are aware of the enslavement and injustice of the regime at the time.

It was a time when the Stalinist regime, with the help of the Office of Security, ruthlessly destroyed any sign of resistance or criticism of the new authorities. So, with a sense of great danger, a conviction of the impending war and the consequences they might face if the letters were revealed, the three protagonists muster a great act of civil courage and briefly describe the dramatic situation in “free Poland.” Another door exchange after 64 years brought those notes to light, and the Management of HSW-Kuźnia Stalowa Wola donated them to the museum’s collection. Sztafeta reporter Stanislaw Chudy, TVN television and the Regional Museum followed in the footsteps of the heroes. The originals of these unusual letters, as well as photographs, documents and biographies of the authors, will be made available to visitors at a special exhibition from April 16, 2011. The content of the presented letters shows the real political situation in Poland and is a complete contradiction of the propaganda slogans promulgated by the authorities of the time, so it is an interesting counterpoint and complement to the exhibition “Mothers, wives and… tractors – or about Polish women in socialist realism.”