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The oppositional activities of Roland Jahn began with the expatriation of the songwriter Wolf Biermann from the GDR in 1976. With relatively spectacular feats to his name, he was a member of the Peace and Human Rights movement. The Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena ex-matriculated Jahn in 1978 from studies in the Faculty of Economic Sciences. In the beginning of the 1980’s he had several stints in prison. Finally, in 1983 he was expatriated against his will. As a journalist with the Free Berlin radio sender, he played a pronounced role in giving a voice to the oppositional elements of the GDR within West Germany. Through his contacts he was able to smuggle printing and copying machines through the Iron Curtain into the GDR. Following reunification he continued work as a journalist. In 2011, the Federal Government appointed him Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic.

Marek Janiak (born 1955) is an architect both by profession and education, however mainly known for being a member and the leading ideologist of the Łódź Kaliska group, the author of Liberating exercises (Ćwiczenia wyzwalające) camera performances and the participant of the Pitch-In Culture.

Janiak was born in Łódź. He studied architecture at the Łódź University of Technology and afterwards stayed at the University to continue his academic career. In 1979 together with Jerzy Koba, Andrzej Kwietniewski, Adam Rzepecki, Andrzej Świetlik and Andrzej Wielogórski he started the Łódź Kaliska artistic group, whose member he continues to be until this day. Janiak authored the most significant programme documents of Łódź Kaliska, and most importantly the 1980 Manifesto of embarrassing art, the 1983 Manifesto of embarrassing art II, the 1984 Second and last manifesto of embarrassing art, and the II (and last) manifesto of embarrassing art (not dated), as well as the 1983 Work without focus (Praca bez skupienia). He co-authored i.a. the 1982 Manifesto (for the art of the eighties), and finally the 1984 For the necessary art.

In the first of these texts Janiak states that the embarrassing art “perhaps embarrasses with its frankness and by breaking a taboo, which is the non-disclosure (privacy) of your struggle with the «necessity» of thoughtful functioning in the society that has been imposed on you, your struggle with the compulsion to adapt constantly to this functioning” and “it relates to the following terms: failed, trivial, stupid, vapid, repetitive, pedestrian, illogical, unreasonable, inconsistent, noncommunicative, unrevealing, unoriginal, indifferent, cynical, unconstructive, unobvious, inconsequent, not good, embarrassing, carefree, null, plagiarism, dull, weak, primitive, thoughtless, confused terms, disorderly, few”. In accordance with this concept the artist placed a banner above the site of the 1981 Osieki artistic plein-air, which read: “Temple of embarrassing and other art”.

The series of objects in For the rational art — embarrassing art (Sztuce racjonalnej – sztuka żenująca) from the beginning of the 1980s, and most importantly the 1987 Liberating exercises constituted a realisation of the ideas put forward in the manifestos and other theoretical statements. Janiak would carry out senseless activities, e.g. he would try to balance a stick on the tip of his nose or move around a massive desk, or break a glass with his head and shove Zbigniew Libera out of the frame. These actions presented the exhaustion of the avant-garde ethos and the embarrassing impossibility of new creation, as well as the sense of loneliness, and the need to compete in the world of art.

Aside from Łódź Kaliska, Janiak co-created another group from Łódź — the City Hall. He also actively participated in the Pitch-In Culture in the years 1981-1987, and was the creator of numerous pages of the Tango magazine. At the end of the 1980s Janiak conceptualised the postmodernist turn in the activities of Łódź Kaliska. In the later years he remained an active member of the group. He was also was a member and, for many years, the president of the Ulica Piotrkowska Foundation. In 2011 he took office as the architect of the City of Łódź. As a professor at the Łódź University of Technology he lectures on photography and interior design at the Institute of Architecture and Urban Development, and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź.

Throughout the major part of the 1980s Janiak was one of the key figures of Łódź artistic underground. He not only dissented against official cultural institutions, but also against patriotic, committed or any other socially-useful type of art. He also had no ties to political opposition.

Sources:
Jarosław Lubiak (ed.), "Szczerość i blaga. Etyka prac Łodzi Kaliskiej w latach 1979-89", Łódź 2009.
Marek Janiak (ed.), "Kultura Zrzuty", Warszawa 1989.
Łódź Kaliska (ed. & elab.), "Bóg zazdrości nam pomyłek", Łódź 1999.

Henryk Jankowski was a Catholic priest, the best known chaplain of the “Solidarity” trade union, to which he was associated from 1980.

He had been ordained to priesthood in 1964 and after serving in two different churches in Gdańsk, in 1970 he became the rector of the saint Bridget in Gdańsk (this parish served also to the Gdańsk Shipyard). Jankowski started to directly support „Solidarity” when he celebrated a mass on 17 August 1980 in Gdańsk Shipyard during the strike. From that day on he showed up there daily in order to celebrate masses and encourage striking shipyard workers. He entered the very close circle of Lech Wałęsa associates. Father Jankowski participated in the First Regional Congress of “Solidarity” in Gdynia in the summer of 1981. According to some testimonies, he mediated between different emerging fractions in the trade movement and tried to mitigate the tension between two main opponents: Lech Wałęsa and Andrzej Gwiazda.

Because of his involvement in the opposition he became the target of Polish secret services. During 1980s he helped the “Solidarity” in Tricity in getting aid (mainly medicines) from American Polonia (Polish diaspora in the United States); he organised summer camps for trade union activists’ children and managed to support financially those oppressed by secret services. Saint Bridget Church and its parish were known as a safe place for Pomeranian opposition in the 1980s. In 1983 Jankowski together with Father Jerzy Popiełuszko (chaplain of Warszawa Steel Mill) co-organised the pilgrimage of “people of work” to Jasna Góra in Częstochowa. Jankowski and Popiełuszko’s activities were one of the best known examples of involvement of the Catholic Church in Polish political opposition. This engagement is still commemorated and used by the “Solidarity” trade union. In the Archives of National Commission of the "Solidarity" Trade Union, artifacts associated to Popiełuszko and Jankowski are still of great importance, according to Archives’ activist Łukasz Grochowski.

According to some, actions of clergyman Jankowski after 1989 cross out his former oppositional heroism. Sketchy businesses, anti-Semitic sermons, cooperation with All-Polish Youth (nationalist, right-wing party), accusations of sexual harassment, introducing politics into church (in Lord’s Graves – traditional representations of Jesus Grave displayed in Poland during Easter holidays) led to the situation, when only the most decisive part of “Solidarity” still celebrates his figure. This firm stand was not changed after the information from the Institute of National Remembrance about priest Jankowski being a contact person for Polish secret service.  

Leaving behind the evaluation of priest Jankowski’s character, his biography nevertheless interestingly presents how did opposition activists navigate in changed social conditions after 1989 and how the memory of involvement of Catholic Church in Polish democratic opposition is being preserved, commemorated, and contested. Conflicting interpretations of father Jankowski’s actions represent one of memory wars on 80s and 90s in Poland. 

Augustinas Janulaitis was a famous Lithuanian political and cultural activist. He cooperated with the illegal Lithuanian media, and was an active member of the Social Democratic Party. He translated the Communist Manifesto (the first edition, 1904) into Lithuanian. Janulaitis was persecuted by the Imperial Russian government for his political activity, and was obliged to emigrate. For a few years, he studied at Bern University in Switzerland. He returned to the Russian Empire, and graduated in law from Moscow University. During the interwar period, as a well-known lawyer and professor, he shifted to the political right, and published a critical study about Soviet Russia ('Lithuania and Contemporary Russia', 1925.) Janulaitis was known to students, the academic community and the public as a legal and cultural historian. He collected material about personalities who played an important role in Lithuanian history and culture: about the lawyer and historian Ignas Danilevičius (1787-1843), the writer and folklorist Mykalojus Akelaitis (1829-1887), the poet Kiprijonas Nezabitauskis (1779-1837), the cultural historian Simonas Daukantas (1793-1864), and others. Janulaitis wrote and published biographies of Danilevičius and Akelaitis. His studies in Lithuanian culture had a huge influence on students, including Meilė Matjošaitytė-Lukšienė (1913-2009), who became a well-known cultural historian, and at the end of the 1980s she helped to initiate the Sąjūdis movement along with other Lithuanian intellectuals. Janulaitis was the uncle of Meilė Lukšienė. 

During the Soviet period, Janulaitis was loyal to the regime. He participated in creating the Academy of Sciences in Soviet Lithuania in 1941, and was elected a member. In 1945, he became the dean of the Faculty of History at Vilnius University. However, in 1946, he was accused of 'bourgeois nationalism' during an ideological campaign that was started by Party authorities against 'Western influences' and 'cosmopolitism'. The Party leadership 'reminded' him of his negative attitude towards Soviet Russia. He survived, but retired from the university and the academy. He died in 1950. Students and the younger generation of the Lithuanian intelligentsia saw him as a representative of the cultural elite of independent Lithuania. His studies in 19th-century Lithuanian culture and his collection of documents about activists in the national revival had a huge impact on Lithuanian historians, especially during the period of the national revival in 1988-1990.

Croatian and American historian Jere (Jerome) Jareb was born in Prvić Šepurina (Croatia) on May 3, 1922, and died in Charlottesville (Virginia, USA) on November 22, 2017. After completing the classics gymnasium in Šibenik, he left the town because Fascist Italy occupied it in September 1941. He moved to Zagreb where he studied at the Faculty of Law. Due to his poor health, he was not recruited into the army of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). He became a member of the editorial board of the magazine Ustaška mladež (Ustasha Youth), where he wrote historical articles until the end of World War II. In the fall of 1944, he was severely stricken by a bout of tuberculosis in the bone of his right leg, and in July 1947 his leg was amputated. At the beginning of May 1945, instead of the planned hospitalisation, he ended up at the refugee camp in the suburbs of Klagenfurt. He stayed in the camp for three months, after which he was sent to the hospital where he remained until May 1949. In December 1951, he moved to Salzburg to seek an immigration visa to the United States.

In January 1952, he flew to New York, where his father, a pre-war economic emigrant, lived. Jere lived in New York until 1966. He was one of the founders of the Croatian Academy in America, established in 1953, and served as its executive secretary for the first four years, and then later became its president. Along with Karlo Mirth, he was the editor of the Academy's Journal of Croatian Studies, which was founded in 1960. From 1953 to 1995, he was a trustee of the journal Hrvatska revija (Croatian Review). From 1953, he studied history at Columbia University, where he earned his MA in 1958. He concluded his graduate studies, with an emphasis on East-Central European and Western Europe contemporary history, in 1964 by defending a doctoral dissertation entitled "The Adriatic Question from June 1919 to February 1924." During his stay in New York, he constantly acquired books from the homeland that he needed to study Croatian history. Olga Živković, then employed at the Lexicographic Institute, sent him books regularly. When Olga travelled to the United States in 1959, Jere Jareb married her (Matković 2008: 722). From 1963 to 1966, he lectured at Rutgers University (New Jersey), and in 1966 he moved to St. Francis University in Loretto (Pennsylvania), where he lectured on European and world history until his retirement in 1992. From 1968 until his retirement, he was chairman of the University’s History Department.

His best known book, Pola stoljeća hrvatske politike (One-Half Century of Croatian Politics), was initially a critical review of Vladko Maček's memoirs, which were serialized in Hrvatska revija (1959). In 1960, he expanded the text and published it as a book in Buenos Aires in 1960. It was a political history of Croatia from 1895 to 1945, with an emphasis on the history of the Ustasha Movement and the NDH. In that book, he presented a different view of the history of 20^th-century Croatian politics than the one that  had prevailed in Croatia and other parts of Yugoslavia. After publishing this book, he became close to the Croatian political emigration. He contacted and interviewed numerous Croatian emigrants, from Vladko Maček, through Juraj Krnjević, Lovro Sušić, to Eugen ‘Dido’ Kvaternik. He also had contacts with historians and other intellectuals from the homeland such as Ljubo Boban, Bogdan Krizman, and Zvonimir Kulundžić. Historians in the country saw his books as valuable and professional works, although they were banned in Yugoslavia. He is also the author of the books Političke uspomene i rad dra Branimira Jelića (Political Memories and Work of Dr Branimir Jelić) published in Cleveland in 1982; Zlato i novac Nezavisne Države Hrvatske izneseni u inozemstvo 1944. i 1945.: dokumentarni prikaz (Gold and money of the Independent State of Croatia taken abroad in 1944 and 1945: Documents) (Zagreb, 1997), and Državno gospodarstveno povjerenstvo Nezavisne Države Hrvatske od kolovoza 1941. do travnja 1945.: dokumentarni prikaz (State Economic Commission of the Independent State of Croatia from August 1941 to April 1945: Documents) (Zagreb, 2001). At the late stage of his career, he was also a corresponding associate of the Croatian Institute of History.

During his academic career, he gathered his collection of books and other publications, which he donated to the Croatian Institute of History in 1997. He has been active in preserving the cultural and historical heritage of Croatian emigrants, so had donated the émigré periodicals to the National and University Library in Zagreb, and the documentation (grey literature) of Croatian emigrants to the Croatian State Archives in Zagreb.

Although he was an anti-communist, he did not join any political organisations nor did he engage in political activism. Jareb acted only on a cultural and academic basis, trying to preserve the legacy of Croatian emigrant communities and explore those spheres and themes in Croatian history such as the history of the NDH which could not be studied freely the communist regime, for only an ideological approach was allowed.