Down a homemade mine shaft in southwestern Poland, a would-be comedian sang in the faint glowing light. The strains of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” in rhythm with a pick ax, rose up from eight yards underground. The song stopped.
“A huge chunk of coal has fallen on my finger!” the miner yelled up the shaft. “Now I can’t pick my nose!”
The sky was black and the stars blazed, especially the constellation Orion. In the nearby city of Walbrzych, the bells had just tolled. It was 9 p.m., the temperature was below freezing, the wind bitter. But for many miners here, in a region known as Lower Silesia, work was just beginning.
The practice of digging coal illegally is often called “rathole mining.” It is better known in places like India, or in South Africa, where illegal mining accidents recently killed five men. But it’s also common in Lower Silesia, near the Czech border.
Poland is Europe’s largest producer of hard coal, and both black and brown coal mines flourish in other parts of the country, from abundant mines in Upper Silesia to the north, to the giant open pit mine in Belchatow, in the east.