The Free Trade Unions of Western Pomerania: The Security Service and the Free Trade Unions of West Pomerania
By making use of, inter alia, secret agents, officers of the Security Service worked to isolate activists in their communities—for example, through attempts to compromise them. The Security Service significantly controlled the activities of the unionists, which allowed it to make attempts to thwart their operations.
Files and operations were put in motion to control activists at every stage. Documented operations include: surveillance operation code named “Senators” (to control the ongoing initiatives of the Free Trade Unions and their compromising, a working operation code named “Distributor” (targetting brothers Jan Witkowski and Mirosław Witkowski), a working operation code named “Stag” (targetting Stefan Kozłowski), operational examination action coded “Agitator” (targetting Zdzisław Podolski), operational examination action coded “Mercury” (to monitor the preparation of the “The Worker of Szczecin” for printing in order to take control of the materials at the final stage of preparation).
Search operations, confiscations and arrests for 48-hour custody became a nearly everyday occurrence for some of them. From the files of the Security Service it seems that that the community of the Free Trade Unions of West Pomerania was significantly infiltrated by secret agents, inter alia, nicknamed “Dill” and “Richard” (Andrzej Kamrowski), “Spider”, “Konstancja” and “Claudius” (Jan Paprocki) and “Albin” (Jolanta Nowak), which made the operations of the SS much easier.
The reports prepared by one of the agents on the community of the Free Trade Unions of West Pomerania, forming a sort of a “chronicle”, are presented in the subsection devoted to the Free Trade Unions of West Pomerania which contains general documents on the activities of the Free Trade Unions.