Professor Wacław Żenczykowski and undone reform of Poland's housing industry

The American home building program launched after the World War II, resulted with 10 million homes built in 10 years. That enormous success attracted considerable attention from foreign engineers and politicians from all over the world. Even those from Soviet block shared that admiration for American housing program in spite officially lauded claims as to the superiority of communist ideology and technology. In late 1956, taking an advantage of the recent political thaw, a delegation of Polish engineers, led by vice minister Czesław Bąbiński, and celebrated engineer, Professor Wacław Żenczykowski, arrived to the US by invitation from the National Association of Home Builders. During the four weeks long tour, they visited several construction sites and exhibitions learning from the American experience. Although they seemed to be impressed by what they had seen, the visit passed unnoticed in Poland, and eventually produced no results. The paper brings out some facts related to that visit, and reveals surprisingly honest opinions expressed by Polish delegates; the opinions which were overstepping any limits of imaginary "freedom of speech " laid out by the political thaw of 1956.