Walesa’s Wife Tells All: ‘Lech Is Not an Easy Man to Love’

The wife of Solidarity leader Lech Walesa bared the secrets of Poland’s best-known family on state television Monday, saying her husband is secretive and tough to get along with.

“Lech is not an easy man to love, understand and be with,” Danuta Walesa told a TV talk-show host. “I don’t think any other woman could put up with him.

“He’s always so secretive. You talk to him, and you never know if you’re getting through or what he’s thinking about,” she said of the man widely expected to become Poland’s next president.

Walesa denied last week that he will try to wrest the presidency from Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, saying his primary concern is winning reelection this week as the leader of Solidarity. But political observers display little doubt that Walesa will eventually seek the presidency.

In the television interview, Danuta Walesa said she enjoys political drama. “When martial law was declared (in 1981 to stamp out Solidarity), it didn’t really faze me. My husband was interned, but I knew they wouldn’t harm him,” she said.

She recalled how, only weeks after giving birth, she was among shipyard workers whose 1980 strike gave rise to Solidarity. But she added that she is opposed to mixing public affairs with family life.

“At one stage our home was like a public institution. News conferences, briefings, journalists besieging our place day and night,” she said.

“I’d get up in the morning to find our flat full of journalists and photographers drinking tea, and that’s when I decided to put my foot down.”

The show included film clips of Danuta Walesa passing through a riot police cordon to lay a wreath at a Solidarity memorial while her husband was interned, and of her receiving his 1983 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway. Walesa declined to go to Oslo for the award, fearing he would not be allowed to return to Poland.

Asked what was most important in life, she said: “To raise our children to become decent human beings and good Poles, people who have respect for others. There’s too little of that nowadays.”