The São Paulo City Hall approved on Thursday (4) the title of citizen of São Paulo to Stanislaw Szermeta, 80 years old, father of Natália Szermeta and father-in-law of Guilherme Boulos, Minister of the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Lula Government (PT).
A member of the PSOL since 2008, Szermeta was born in 1945 in Germany. Son of two prisoners of war in Europe – a Polish father and a Ukrainian mother – he arrived with them in Brazil in 1949, more precisely in Osasco, metropolitan region of São Paulo.
Metalworker Stan, as he is known, worked in Osasco and Taboão da Serra and actively participated in movements for workers’ rights and the defense of democracy. He was arrested by the military dictatorship in 1971 and imprisoned for a year and five months in DOI-Codi, Deops (Department of Political and Social Order of São Paulo) and Tiradentes Prison.
In the 1970s, he began living in the south of the capital, where he still lives today. It was to be closer to his wife’s family that Boulos moved to Campo Limpo, a region with which he identifies.
He was regional leader of the CUT (Central Única dos Trabalhadores) and joined the PT in 1986. Twenty-one years later, he left the party amid the aftermath of the Mensalão scandal.
Szermeta joined the Metalworkers’ Union of Osasco and Region in the 1980s and obtained Brazilian citizenship with Brazil’s redemocratization. Until then, he was not recognized as a citizen of Germany or Poland, the country of his ancestors, having lived as a stateless person for almost half his life.
He is one of the organizers of the Zequinha Barreto Institute, a space for the dissemination of socialist ideas and the conservation of documents on the history of the working class.
The proposal to grant the title was presented by councilor Celso Giannazi, also from the PSOL.
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