DZIWEX1981 · a record
Polski English

People and institutions

On one side a state firm and two Italian agencies. On the other a few journalists and several hundred women. Names are given as they appear in the sources: in full where they were published, abbreviated where the press abbreviated them.

What ZPR was

Zjednoczone Przedsiębiorstwa Rozrywkowe (ZPR, "United Entertainment Enterprises") was a state enterprise created in 1948 by order of the Minister of Culture and Art, in agreement with the Minister of the Treasury and the head of the Central Planning Office. Its task was written down as "providing decent and popular entertainment by organising and running culture parks, circuses and funfairs, and travelling menageries".[20] In time ZPR came to cover almost all of communist Poland's mass entertainment: circuses, stage and variety shows, training of performers, festivals including those in Sopot and Opole, "international cooperation and exchange in artistic and entertainment services", lotteries, and from 1972, as the only legal owner, arcades of slot and pinball machines.[21] It was under this "international exchange" that ZPR's Artistic Events Office and its export and import department signed contracts with Italian agencies.[2][3]

Where it came from

ZPR's predecessor was the Chief Directorate of Entertainment Shows, set up on 2 May 1946 as the state took over the pre-war circuses and funfairs.[22] ZPR had no founder in the sense of a person: it was created by the minister and run by a Directorate, a director with two deputies, appointed and dismissed by the Minister of Culture and Art.[22] That was the ordinary arrangement for a state enterprise. Online sources name no directors from the 1950s to 1970s; in 1981 the director was Stanisław Nowotny.[2]

How it got into this business

Performers' trips abroad were a state monopoly in communist Poland, and the state earned hard currency from them. The main intermediary was the Polish Artistic Agency Pagart, created by a ministerial order of 31 December 1956: it signed foreign contracts in its own name, took 10 percent of fees for performances in "fraternal countries" and 20 percent in capitalist ones, and acted as a passport office, since a performer collected the passport at Pagart and handed it back there on return.[23] ZPR had "international cooperation and exchange in artistic and entertainment services" in its statute and its own Artistic Events Office with an export and import department.[21][3] Director Nowotny stated the purpose plainly: "By exporting our troupes we earn the fees of the foreign artists we bring to Poland."[2] How and when ZPR's export department came into contact with Olivero is told by a single sentence: Cassaglia "met a Hungarian variety artist who gave him the contacts to ZPR staff", and in 1980 "began penetrating this market".[2] Dobrowolska dates the recruitment from 1977.[5] The earlier history of this channel is unknown.

Who allowed it

The advert was signed by the Ochota District Culture Centre with ZPR's Artistic Events Office; the auditions were run by ZPR's "authorised committees"; service passports were issued to the women as ZPR employees; the contracts were signed in the ZPR office; the money went through the Polish consulate in Milan.[2][3] Every one of those rungs was the state. Only staff of the export and import department were charged and convicted, with suspended sentences.[1][2] Nobody in ZPR's management, in the Ministry of Culture or in the consular service was held responsible, at least according to the available sources.

What became of it

ZPR was therefore neither a shell company nor a private middleman. It was an institution of the state. That is exactly why, as the militia spokesman admitted, the scheme "bore the marks of legality".[2] It survived to the end of communism. On 23 September 1991 the culture minister launched the enterprise's transformation and the same day dismissed its director-general Zbigniew Benbenek; a week later an employee company, ZPR S.A., was formed, which on 7 October signed a lease of the assets with the State Treasury, with the same Benbenek at its head. The Supreme Audit Office later found the privatisation had been carried out contrary to the statute and the assets undervalued by 4.81 million złoty.[24][25] Today ZPR S.A. runs a casino chain and is the majority shareholder of a media group.[21] No source on the 1981 case mentions Benbenek or any later owner; their connection to the case is the continuity of the firm. The enterprise's communist-era records are held by the State Archive in Warsaw as the fonds "Zjednoczone Przedsiębiorstwa Rozrywkowe w Warszawie".[22]

The Polish side

Stanisław Nowotny
Director of Zjednoczone Przedsiębiorstwa Rozrywkowe (ZPR) in 1981, "Stanisław N." in some sources. He flatly denied any contact between the firm and the mafia: contracts were made "only with licensed artistic agencies. Such as Thea Maggioli and Olivero." He defended the exports ("By exporting our troupes we earn the fees of the foreign artists we bring to Poland"), defended the arrested Cassaglia ("maybe not very educated, six years of primary school, but very committed") and pointed to the "consumption optional" clause.[2] He was not charged; the sources do not say whether he faced any consequences.
Jan Ch., head of ZPR's export and import department
Kurier Polski wrote of "the arrest of a group of Polish pimps employed in ZPR's export department". The Kulisy reporter reached Jan Ch., released after 48 hours, who introduced himself as head of that department: "Last year I signed permission for only a few variety troupes to go to Italy. Unless somebody organised illegal transport under my institution's name."[2][3] In 1984 the head of ZPR's export and import department was sentenced to two years suspended and a fine, for currency offences only.[1][2] The sources do not explicitly confirm that this is the same person.
Staff of ZPR's foreign department
Charged, sentenced to one year suspended and fines.[1] One of them admitted on camera in "Atrakcja z tłem" that he had taken dollar bribes from the Italians for sending "ballerinas" west.[2][3] Lewandowski described another who took 20 dollars from the women per night with a client and 500 dollars from a club owner for a monthly flat rate; he devoted a paragraph to the man's sexual orientation, which Dzierżanowski rightly calls making a point of an irrelevant fact.[2][3]
Recruiters "on the payroll as choreography specialists"
That is how Antena described the people who ran the auditions. The press did not name them.[2]
Ochota District Culture Centre
Co-organiser of the recruitment according to the 1980 advert. Its role beyond the advert is not described in the sources.[3]

The Italian side

Olivero, Alessandria
A licensed artistic agency that ordered troupes from ZPR. Antena wrote that its bosses were "known criminals in that country".[2] In the previous year its people had been in Poland six times and "bought four troupes".[2] After the trial it cut all contact with Polish partners.[2]
Camillo Cassaglia
Olivero's impresario. He began "penetrating" the Polish market in 1980; "in his own country he met a Hungarian variety artist who gave him the contacts to ZPR staff". He met the groups at the airport in person. Arrested with Massieri at Hotel Europejski when they came "for a new transport". Both names were revealed by Życie Literackie. Released on bail of 100,000 dollars, he returned to Italy and died of lung cancer a few months before the trial.[2][3]
Claudio Massieri
Cassaglia's deputy. Arrested with him, released on bail, never appeared at trial. "Poland had no extradition treaty with the Italian state at the time", and the investigators did not know his address.[2]
Thea Maggioli and Mario Gaviraghi
The second agency and its owner, who "prudently never crossed the Polish border". Arrested by Italian police after a strangled girl was found in his venue; Polish investigators learned of it from the Italian papers. According to Lewandowski he was released on bail.[2][8] Mariola from Rzeszów estimated that about 700 Polish women worked in his venues.[2]
The clubs
Rosa Pantera, Blue Notte, Omnibus, Moulin del Topo, "provincial clubs around Milan and Florence".[2] Most is known about the Omnibus: Magda places it "near Florence", Piotrowski slept there after reaching Alessandria, Yoko Show and Lady Shic performed there, and in summer 1985 a Polish troupe was there again, this time via Pagart.[2] The sources give nothing on the clubs' owners or on what became of the venues before or after. They could not be identified in the Italian material available.

The journalists

Jan Śpiewak, Antena
Author of "Dziwex i mafia", March 1981, which gave the case its name and its publicity. His article is the source of most of the most drastic claims.[2][3][7]
Maciej Piotrowski, Kulisy
The only reporter who went to Italy. His editors refused a travel allowance; he took one for Poznań "as cover", hitched to Alessandria, lived for two days on food brought from Poland and slept at the Omnibus. He was a key witness at the trial, as the only one who had seen the booths.[2][3]
Jan Lewandowski, Ekspres Reporterów
Author of the report "Blondynki na sprzedaż" of January 1982.[2][8]
Others
Życie Literackie revealed the Italians' names; Kurier Polski put the story on its front page; Życie Warszawy ran "Exploitation of man by man" in June; Bożena Basiewicz wrote in Nadodrze and Krystyna Świątecka in Tygodnik Kulturalny.[2][3][15]
Helena Kowalik, Wprost
Court reporter whose 2014 piece "Blondynki do konsumpcji" is today the fullest available account of the case.[2]
Marcin Dzierżanowski, My Company Polska
Author of the 2023 article that recovered the 1980 advert and the quotations from Nadodrze, Tygodnik Kulturalny and the defence counsel's memoirs.[3]

Court and defence

Stanisław Zabłocki
Defence counsel at the trial, then a Warsaw advocate who defended opposition activists in the 1980s, from 1991 a judge of the Supreme Court and in 2016 to 2020 its president in charge of the Criminal Chamber. In his memoirs he wrote that "the trial quickly dispelled the myths built around the case" and that "at moments the courtroom was frankly boring".[3]
The court
The bench was presided over by a woman judge. The trial was closed. In its reasoning the court wrote that "the publicity given to the affair hindered reaching the material truth at trial", and that televised arrests had punished the accused more than the verdict.[2][3]

Solidarity

Śpiewak's report drew a response from the Inter-Enterprise Coordinating Committee of the Solidarity union of entertainment-industry workers: "Revealing to the public an affair of this type, of a character and scale hitherto unknown in our country, was necessary in every respect. It became possible thanks to the changes taking place in Poland after August 1980."[3][5]

Historians

Anna Dobrowolska
Historian (Oxford, Basel). Author of Zawodowe dziewczyny, with the chapter "Mewki, tirówki i 'Dziwex'", and of "Everyone Dreams About Leaving". Her argument: the case exploded because it coincided with the "moral revolution" of 1980 to 1981.[3][5][6]