When Dola i niedola… first appeared, it caused scandal. Before the Congress even started, its entire print run was confiscated and ordered to be shredded, while Minorski was sent to the Bereza Kartuska prison for citizens posing threat to the state. As Marian Falski reminisced:
It was quite a scandal, even though the Congress was organised under the patronage of the First Lady [Mościcka], the brochure got confiscated. The confiscation was personally ordered by Prime Minister Składkowski. As word had it at the Congress, he had assumed that a photograph of soaked cowherds hiding under a coat, with the caption 'while we're stranded with the cows', was an allusion to the authorities.
It seems that the reasons for confiscation were much more serious. Images of children playing in the gutter did not go well with an official ceremony under the auspices of the presidential couple, let alone fit into the official propaganda vision of the Sanation Poland. Gaps in education, health and social care, as well as everyday pathologies associated with poverty which were pointed out by the authors of the booklet aptly targeted the image of Second Polish Republic as a rapidly modernising country with superpower aspirations.
The preserved copies of Dola i niedola… prove that fortunately not all of them were destroyed. It is worth pointing out the uniqueness of the booklet – it is one of the few Polish photo publications (up until the late 20th century) expressing authentic social engagement, devised by a group of activists and members of leftist opposition, instead of the state authorities. It comes as no surprise, then, that a few years later both Minorski's photographs and the dialectics of the old and new order were snatched up in an almost unchanged form by the post-war communist propaganda, serving the ends of the new authorities and becoming the template for the socialist realist rhetorics.
photographs: Aleksander Minorski, Tadeusz Bukowski, Jan Ryś, R. Wojciechowski, S. Zawidzki
texts and editing: Józef Włodarski, Committee of the Children's Congress
graphic design: Wanda Zawidzka
publisher: National Committee of the Children's Congress, Warsaw
year of publication: 1938
volume: 32 pages
format: 16.5 x 24 cm
cover: brochure
print run: 60 000