Special envoy to Silesia
Wrapped up in his orange puffer jacket, Rafał Rzaczek takes the sun on the main square of Ruda Slaska, a town of 130,000 inhabitants, in southwestern Poland, in the heart of the mining basin.
This 28-year-old Pole started working at the age of 23 at the Bielszowice mine, in the west of the city, where he is a machinist.
He and his colleagues are responsible for moving people, equipment and, of course, coal, from the bottom to the surface.
“
I knew it was hard work, I saw how my father and my grandfather toiled at the mine, but I still wanted to make it my profession, certainly by family tradition, for the salary too
”, analyzes the young man, whose family has worked in the mine for nearly 100 years.
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His sister, his mother, his father-in-law ... all of them - except his wife - had or still have the mine for a living.
Like tens of thousands of families in Silesia, it is the mine that supplies the boilers,
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