The changes, the ruling party argues, are necessary to clear out an old Communist elite, but they are “rendering the independence of the judiciary completely moot,” Frans Timmermans, the vice president of the European Commission, said in December.

“The constitutionality of legislation can no longer be guaranteed,” he said, because “the country’s judiciary is now under the political control of the ruling majority.”

The European Union has warned Poland officially, charging that Warsaw risks “a serious breach” of its commitment to shared values of liberal democracy and the rule of law, principles that all member states have sworn to uphold.

Some think that Warsaw and Brussels will compromise somehow. But that is difficult to foresee. Mr. Buras sees in Mr. Kaczynski a pessimism about the European project.

“He thinks that this E.U. is doomed to fail, and so we need to save ourselves,” Mr. Buras said. “He believes that it cannot survive.”

That concerns Ms. Walczuk, the school director, who remembers the paucity of her choices under Communism and worries about the future of her daughter, 16, and son, 12.

“I fear this fight with Brussels might limit my children’s right to work and travel in Europe,” she said. “I know my kids have no sense of not having anything, no sense that they should say something, to stand up for their rights, and this worries me.”