The São Paulo City Council approved on Thursday (4) the title of São Paulo citizen to , 80, father of Natália Szermeta and father-in-law of , minister of the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Lula (PT) government.
Affiliated with 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 specifically 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 was imprisoned for one year and five months, in DOI-Codi, Deops (Department of Political and Social Order of São Paulo) and Tiradentes prison.
In the 1970s, he started living in the south of the capital, where he still lives today. It was to be close to his wife’s family that Boulos moved to the region in which he grew up.
He was a regional leader of the CUT (Central Única dos Trabalhadores) and joined the PT in 1986. Twenty-one years later, he left the party amidst the consequences of the Mensalão scandal.
Szermeta joined the Metalworkers Union of Osasco and the region in the 1980s and obtained Brazilian nationality with the redemocratization of Brazil. 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 of his life.
He is one of the organizers of the Zequinha Barreto Institute, a space for disseminating socialist ideas and preserving material on working-class history.
The proposal to grant the title was presented by councilor Celso Giannazi, also from PSOL.
LINK PRESENT: Did you like this text? Subscribers can access seven free accesses from any link per day. Just click the blue F below.
