Mechanism
Nobody was snatched off the street. The scheme was simpler than that, and more effective for it: a legal institution, a legal audition, a legal passport, a legal contract. Only on arrival did the "variety show" reveal what it was. Everything below comes from two long reports, Helena Kowalik's court reportage and Marcin Dzierżanowski's historical piece, both quoting the 1981 press.[2][3]
1. The advert
In 1980 an advert appeared in the Warsaw press: "The Ochota District Culture Centre, in cooperation with the Artistic Events Office of United Entertainment Enterprises, is forming a female ballet troupe for stage purposes. Required: age 18 or over; a secondary-school certificate desirable; proportional build. Height 168 to 172 cm." Similar adverts followed in the regional press, among others in Kraków, Łódź and Rzeszów.[3] ZPR is Zjednoczone Przedsiębiorstwa Rozrywkowe, the state entertainment monopoly, described in People and institutions. Nothing was said about dancing. A UPI wire of May 1981 summarised the terms as "at least 18, 5 ft 6 in and blonde".[15]
2. Who was wanted and who came
Candidates came in their thousands, many from the provinces; the organisers put them up in the hotel, for many a first night in a hotel in their lives.[3] Krystyna Świątecka wrote in Tygodnik Kulturalny: "Only looks counted. Qualifications did not matter. Waitresses, kiosk sellers, shop assistants, hairdressers, girls of other trades were offered foreign contracts. After a few days of training that was fictitious in substance they received fictitious certificates." Bożena Basiewicz in Nadodrze: the girls "had to have the right measurements in bust, waist and hips, suitably long legs and, as far as possible, a short mind".[3] According to Antena they were issued certificates that they were students of the "Stage under the Dome", and that settled their qualifications.[3][7]
3. The audition
Auditions were held at Hotel Europejski in Warsaw, judged by a ZPR committee of choreographers together with Italian "impresarios".[3] The militia spokesman later stressed that "authorised committees handled the girls' qualification for departure", which gave the scheme "the marks of legality".[2] The Polish women the Kulisy reporter met in Italy said plainly that "that qualification committee at ZPR was a sham, they had no idea about dancing".[2] Troupes received names: Mette Show, Lady Shic, Berdo Show, Li-U-Fa, Yoko Show.[2][3]
4. "Attraction" and "background"
Hence the title of the television report. Antena described the method for exporting a group legally: "the suspects would find a so-called attraction (an acrobat, say, or an illusionist) and add a 'background'. The attraction brought no income; the artist got a small room, the small sum guaranteed in the contract, and a gangster kept watch."[3][7] The "background" was the women.
5. Passport and contract
In communist Poland a passport was a privilege and a trip to the West a dream. The militia identified two channels. One group travelled on private passports, as tourists, to venues tied to Mario Gaviraghi's agency. The other, on service passports as ZPR employees, was sent by ZPR working with Olivero.[1][2] The contract was signed in the ZPR office. Director Nowotny defended it like this: "We settled the problem of our artists' contact with the venues' patrons in the contract by adding a clause: consumption optional."[2] The women knew "barely two or three words" of Italian.[2]
6. The money
According to the 1981 press a club paid ZPR 220 dollars per day of an "artist's" work, of which the woman received 33 dollars, that is 15 percent; the money moved through the Polish consulate in Milan.[2][3] Those 33 dollars were roughly a month's wages in Poland.[3] Polish recruiters, according to Antena, got 500 dollars per blonde plus 3 dollars for every day she "serviced clients for tokens".[2][15] Lewandowski described a ZPR foreign-department employee who took 20 dollars on the side from the women for each night with a client, and 500 dollars from a club owner whenever an Italian took a woman on a monthly flat rate.[2][8] The militia estimated the recruiters had made at least a million dollars.[1][2]
7. On arrival: the rulebook
The fullest description of the system was given to the Kulisy reporter by an officer of the militia's criminal bureau. It is worth quoting whole, because it is the only investigator's account that survives in print:
"The girls went to Italy under the pretext of performing and will insist on not calling certain things by their name. In Italy they entered the gears of a system Cassaglia had tried and tested. Right after arrival they were acquainted with the agency's rulebook, which really is strict. They left their rooms only for work, at 10 p.m. They slept until noon. In the venue their fixed place was on the so-called display, the tables in the middle of the room. They did not know the language; the waiters communicated with the clients, and also let them know whether a blonde was, as they put it, already 'broken in' or only making her debut. The young Polish women knew one thing for certain: they were to lure a client to the table and persuade him to consume in the booth behind the partition. If they resisted, the owner added two or three prostitutes to the group, and after a few days the resistant ones noticed that the new colleagues earned more, enjoyed the boss's favour and received presents from clients. And they did not resist much after that."An officer of the Militia High Command talking to Maciej Piotrowski, 1981, after Helena Kowalik.[2]
"Consumption" meant sitting at the table and pushing the client to order expensive drinks, brought to the private booths; for taking part a woman received about 100 lire, the price of a pack of cigarettes.[2] If the client decided, "he took the girl set before him to the booth. He did not pay her, but he had to buy champagne: from the moment he went behind the partition the meter was running".[2] For a night outside the venue the client paid the owner 200,000 to 300,000 lire, of which the woman got five percent.[2]
Why it worked
Historian Anna Dobrowolska notes that the title of her article, "Everyone Dreams About Leaving", is a quotation from the period. Poverty, no prospects and a closed border made an offer of the West with a legal passport impossible to refuse.[5] The Kabaret Tey song says it outright: "Zośka was twenty, with a father on the railways, / mould settled on the wall at home, her younger brother went off the rails. / Poverty, there was great poverty at home".[3][9] The state supplied the documents and the committee, the agency supplied the jobs, and the line between them was invisible to a twenty-year-old from Rzeszów. After Piotrowski's reports, visa applications by young women at the Italian embassy rose many times over.[2][3]