Page 140 - Centrum Dialogu im. Marka Edelmana w Łodzi. Jesteśmy drzewami wiecznymi.

years old and I perfectly remember my enthusiasm thining that I do not have
to be afraid anymore. That this period of my life, living in constant fear like
that of a hunted animal has ended”, he explains.
They immediately returned to Łódź. Their former apartment had been plun-
dered utterly. In June 1945, Jerzy Salamonowicz appeared unexpectedly. He
had survived Auschwitz, typhus, the “march of the dead”, Mauthausen, and
then the camp in Ebensee. There he was liberated by the American army.
They began to rebuild their lives.
“I grew up having two mothers, because of course, Zofia stayed with us, and
I tried to forget the dark period of war”, he says. In 1948, the family formally
changed its surname to Skotnicki.
Stefan began his education straight away from the fifth grade, but he did well.
In 1951, he was admitted to the Medical Faculty at the Medical University of
Łódź. While still a student there, he began working as an assistant lecturer at
the Histology and Embryology Unit, and later at the Surgery University Hospital
No. 2 of the Medical University of Łódź. In 1957, he graduated in medicine
with an honours degree (“cum laude”). In 1962, he defended his doctoral
thesis, becoming in 1965, a consultant general surgeon.
In the meantime, in 1963, he married Mirosława Łapot, and in 1965 and
1967, the family grew as son, Piotr and daughter, Ewa were born. “Everything
looked as if we would be a happy family enjoying life in the Polish People’s
Republic. Unfortunately, then came 1968”, Skotnicki recalls.
First, Dr. Skotnicki was given notice by the Medical University. Without giving
reasons, his employment contract for the position of an assistant professor
at the Surgery University Hospital No. 2 in Łódź was not extended. “It turned
out that as a “Zionist element” I have, or may have, a negative impact on
the students. My arguments that I was not in Łódź during the events of March
68 carried no weight” he says.
Thanks to contacts, he got a job at the Pirogow Hospital, but his planned
trip to London to the Cardiology Centre on a British Council scholarship was
cancelled by the Ministry of Health without giving reasons. The Skotnickis were
also removed from the waiting list for the allotment of a flat. There were also
other harassments. They came to the conclusion that the only way out of the
situation was to emigrate. “For me, making this decision was relatively easier
than for Mirka, my wife, mother of our children. As a native Pole, a Catholic,
she suddenly had to make the decision to leave her country, parents, friends
forever, without hope that she would ever see them again. At the time, I was
not hopeful that the system would ever change”, he recalls.
At the beginning of 1969, the Skotnickis asked for permission to leave the
country. “The decision to emigrate was very difficult for our parents, but
also for Zofia – for the last 6 years we lived in Łódź together with her and
her husband, as one family. Just like she was a mother to me in the years of
my childhood, she now performed all the duties and had all the honours of
a grandmother”, he continues the story.

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