One image that did become synonymous with the 1970 protest movement, is the image that gives the film its sub-title and provoked a poetic and musical response from Polish artists of the time. Zbigniew Godlewski, a young shipyard worker from Elbląg was shot and killed in Gdynia, by militia firing into a crowd of protestors from an overhead helicopter. His fellow protestors managed to hoist his body up onto a door and carried him through the streets of the city until they were confronted by more armed militia units. At the time of this event nobody knew Godlewski’s identity, so he was given the common Polish name Jan Wiśniewski, which then served as the title of a particularly frank and forthright political poem and song ‘Ballada o Janku Wiśniewskim’. The song was sung by Krystyna Janda at the end of Człowiek z żelaza and as a direct reference is reprised at the end of Czarny czwartek, in an even more guttural and impassioned manner, by Kazik Staszewski, lead-singer of one of the foremost Polish rock bands Kult.
— Black Thursday by Antoni Krauze and its relationship to Wajda’s Czlowiek z zelaza
