Lech Wałęsa's Wall, Gdansk

By 1980, the Polish economy had been in severe crisis for five years. When the government drastically increased food prices again, public resentment over poor living and working conditions began to boil over.

Growing tensions erupted in the early hours of August 14, 1980, when Anna Walentynowicz, a 51-year-old crane operator at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, was fired for her political stance. In swift response to what they saw as an injustice, the other shipyard workers went on strike, demanding both her reinstatement and a pay rise.

The man who came to lead the opposition movement was Lech Wałęsa, a former electrician at the shipyard who had also previously been dismissed by management for political reasons.

At around 11 o’clock that same morning, amid events that threatened to derail the planned protests and endanger his fellow activists, Wałęsa, locked outside the shipyard, climbed over the wall in order to assume leadership of the strike and prevent further escalation.

This scaling of the wall became legendary, turning it into a symbol of the idea of freedom in Poland. The section of wall on Robotnicza Street over which Wałęsa had climbed into the closed shipyard was later cut out and placed on display next to a section of the Berlin Wall, between the shipyards and the railway station. It stood there until it was destroyed when a car crashed into it. The wall fragment has since been rebuilt and now stands outside the Solidarity headquarters, a short walk from the shipyard gates.