Timeline
The case was brief in the papers and long in court. The dates below come from Helena Kowalik's court reportage, the Polish Wikipedia entry and the My Company Polska article.[1][2][3] Where a source gives only a year, so do we.
Prostitution in communist Poland lives in and around the hard-currency hotels, tolerated and watched by the militia and the secret police. In May 1973 nine bellhops and doormen of Warsaw's Hotel Europejski go on trial for "systematically demanding bribes" from sex workers: up to 100 złoty to enter the hotel café and up to 500 to enter the hotel. Seventeen women testify; one says that when they refused to pay, "a lady from the Interior Ministry came over to the hotel and took care of everything".[4][17]
According to Anna Dobrowolska the recruitment runs from 1977, and in that time two Italians are said to have recruited at least 1,500 women from across Poland.[5] A 1981 UPI wire speaks of "about two years" up to 1980.[15]
Mario Gaviraghi's "theatrical agency" operates in Florence, according to the Italian press of 1980 "for about two years". Around mid-1979 a young Black woman complains to the labour inspectorate; the Ministries of Labour and Foreign Affairs order a check of the agency's contracts.[35][36]
Anna Maria Lazzeretti, partner of the manager of the "Pic Nic" club in Fiesole, is murdered in Florence: bound, with a stocking in her throat.[33][36]
The carabinieri arrest fourteen people in Florence, among them Mario Gaviraghi, on charges of forcing about five hundred dancers, Polish women among them, into prostitution in four clubs, including the Mulin del Topo in Fucecchio. Four months later Antena will describe the same agency as "Thea Maggioli".[34][35]
The Italian impresario Camillo Cassaglia, who got his contacts at Zjednoczone Przedsiębiorstwa Rozrywkowe (ZPR) from a Hungarian variety artist he had met at home, begins working the Polish market.[2] Newspapers carry adverts for ballet troupes going abroad: women over 18, "of proportional build", 168 to 172 cm tall. Auditions are held at Hotel Europejski.[2][3] By the end of the year at least 300 women have been sent to Italy.[1]
Antena, a weekly tied to Polish Television, publishes a short unsigned item, "'Dziwex' i mafia", on 13 April, and Jan Śpiewak's article "Dziwex i mafia" in the issue of 21–26 April. Those are the dates in Anna Dobrowolska's footnotes; Kowalik and Dzierżanowski say March 1981.[42] He calls it "the largest trafficking case in the history of Polish criminology" and "the largest such case uncovered in Europe since 1945".[1][2][7]
The militia arrests Camillo Cassaglia and Claudio Massieri at Hotel Europejski when they arrive to sign a contract for more "dancers".[2][3] Dobrowolska dates the arrest to March and the public revelation to April 1981;[5] Wikipedia says a month after the Antena article.[1] At the Różycki bazaar the Antena issue sells for thirty times its cover price.[2]
According to La Stampa of Turin, Cassaglia and Massieri are detained in Warsaw "at the end of April".[26]
The daily Kurier Polski runs the story in red headlines on its front page. UPI sends a wire from Warsaw: at least 300 women, requirements "at least 18, 5 ft 6 in and blonde", 500 dollars a head plus 3 dollars a day for the recruiters, "the biggest affair of this kind in Europe since World War II".[15]
La Stampa writes about the case three times on its Alessandria province pages. The Italian police and carabinieri "rule out" trafficking, and the Omnibus club in Cassano Spinola, formerly Cassaglia's, is named as the Polish women's "first stage" in Italy. On 4 June Życie Warszawy writes of more than 1,500 women and eight Poles in prison. On 6 June the paper reports a second Italian inquiry, at the Savona prosecutor's office.[26][27][28]
At 20:50 Polish Television airs the film report "Atrakcja z tłem" ("An attraction with a background"): blonde women, backs to the camera, describe Italy.[3][18]
The Militia High Command announces an investigation. At a press conference the prosecution admits this is international trafficking but plays down the scale: "the girls are afraid of the mafia" and "the criminal activity looked legal from outside". Forty dancers are questioned on return, eventually more than 300 women.[1][2][4]
Maciej Piotrowski of the weekly Kulisy travels at his own expense to Alessandria, seat of the Olivero agency, and interviews Polish women there. Italian police suggest Cassaglia was the victim of a competitor's revenge. Kabaret Tey performs the song "Dziwex".[2][9]
Jan Lewandowski publishes the report "Blondynki na sprzedaż" ("Blondes for sale") in Ekspres Reporterów, a state publisher's reportage series (pages 107 to 147 of issue 1/1982, according to Dobrowolska's footnote). He writes that he cannot call Cassaglia a typical supplier of women to brothels with certainty, but that the Italian had that opportunity in Poland.[2][8]
After three years the prosecution files an indictment: trafficking, profiting from prostitution, currency offences. Cassaglia dies of lung cancer months before trial. The court drops the first two charges and gives ZPR staff suspended sentences for currency dealing.[1][2]
Polish dance troupes, now through the Pagart agency, are performing at the Omnibus club again.[2][3]
The Omnibus in Cassano Spinola, renamed Biblos, closes after a series of police interventions. In 2021 the empty building is sold at auction.[29][30]
The Opole "Dziweks" case: three men send at least 89 women to Rotterdam as hostesses and dancers. The trial drags on for over a decade.[10]
Historian Anna Dobrowolska writes up the case in her book Zawodowe dziewczyny and in the Journal of Women's History, placing it in the late-communist debate about migration and morality.[5][6]