ABSTRACT
K rystyna Litynska is always quick to point out that she was interned for ten weeks after martial law while many of her friends
served much lengthier sentences. But though the duration was shorter the long-term effects of that two-and-a-half month incarceration have remained with her to this day. The 13th of December 1981 was bitterly cold, like any other winter night in Warsaw. It was not a night to huddle in a freezing cold barracks with no blankets, running water, light or heating. Unwilling to glorify her experience, Krystyna is almost matter-of-fact in her description of the tuberculosis she contracted as a result of her period in Olszynka women's prison. Perhaps one sideeffect of the mass communication of the horrors of war and torture is to lessen the impact of the withdrawal of basic human rights, wrongful imprisonment and non-violent inhuman treatment. It appears to make even the victims unwilling to complain lest it appear that they seek to compare their treatment with that meted out by more gruesome or brutal regimes.
