ABSTRACT
In 1962, Adam, aged 32, penned a letter to the editors of the German magazine Der Weg zu Freundschaft und Toleranz, in which he stated: “In a number of large cities in Poland homosexuals are a completely normal phenomenon and the public is not upset. But you should know that it is the general backwardness of public opinion rather than any legal regulation that is keeping us from being more visible. … There are plenty of us here, homosexuals. No authority, whether at state level or the police, is interested in us or interferes in our affairs.” Adam’s seemingly optimistic point of view was perhaps determined by his young age and his location in an urban center with a notable gay presence, as his anecdotal report hardly applies to how most homosexual men in the People’s Republic of Poland lived. The chapter presents the other side of the story by focusing on expert discourses of the state police (called Citizens’ Militia) concerning homosexuality and on queer individuals’ memories of dealings with the police. Most Polish queers may not have been aware that they were being monitored), whose members received special training on how to track down and collect information about homosexuals. Drawing on archival documents of the Polish state police, the chapter reconstructs homosexuality as construed by members of the police force and the ways in which policemen tried to infiltrate queer communities with the intention of creating a database of all homosexuals in Poland.
