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Post by pjotr on Mar 4, 2019 1:35:50 GMT 1
 How the Security Office persecuted the heroes of the Warsaw UprisingThey were imprisoned in the basements of the former Ministry of Public Security at Koszykowa Street. They were humiliated, starved and tortured. Soldiers of the Home Army, Warsaw insurgents. Heroes.
In the National Day of Remembrance of the Cursed Soldiers, on March 1, President Andrzej Duda opened the new exhibition "Security objectives. Arrest of the Ministry of Public Security 1945-1954" by Koszykowa prepared by the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising. It was established in the basements of the former Ministry of Public Security (today it houses the Ministry of Justice), in a building that survived the war and in the basement of which the detention facility began operating in autumn 1945. Three years later, the entire building was expanded. The existing target infrastructure left behind by the predecessors - the Kripo German criminal police - was used. Prisoners detained there were classified as "political", "economic" and "saboteurs". Germans and Ukrainians were also detained there. But the overwhelming majority were political prisoners.
- The guards were French communists, brought in order to completely cut off the prisoners from the outside world and minimize the risk of escape - Jan Ołdakowski, director of the Warsaw Uprising Museum tells in an interview with "Poland."
The then security department, organized according to Soviet models and under the supervision of Soviet "advisers", used methods used by the NKVD or counterintelligence "Smersh", such as humiliation, starvation, beating and torture. The head of the Ministry of Public Security (Polish: Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego or MBP), General Stanisław Radkiewicz, admitted explicitly that the goal of the institution he is aiming at is to "beat the class enemy". The scale of repression was enormous.
Stanisław Radkiewicz (Polish pronunciation: [staˈɲiswaf ratˈkʲevit͡ʂ]; 19 January 1903 – 13 December 1987) was a Polish communist activist with Soviet citizenship, a member of the pre-war Communist Party of Poland and of the post-war Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR). As head of the Polish communist secret police (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa or UB) between 1944 and 1954, he was one of the chief organisers of Stalinist terror in Poland in those years. He also served as a political commissar and was made a Divisional General in Communist Poland.
In the years 1944-1956 over 1 million people passed through communist prisons in Poland, and over 5 million citizens were subjected to harassment and repression. In the years 1944-1956, 5,000 were sentenced to death. people, of which the judgment was made for approx. 3 thousand. Over 8.5 thousand security people killed in the fight between communist security forces and anti-communist resistance fighters, the "cursed soldiers" (also known as "doomed soldiers", "accursed soldiers" or "damned soldiers"; Polish: Żołnierze wyklęci). During this period, 20,439 people died in prison (data from the Central Board of Criminal Institutions of the 1990s). In 1945, the Central Committee of the Polish Workers' Party defined the "desirable" proportions of surveillance - one officer of the Security Office for 200 citizens. And although it was not possible to achieve this number, in 1953 Poles were guarded by about 33 thousand UB officers and watched by 85,000 secret security agents.
The new exhibition of the Warsaw Uprising Museum shows the methods of the security apparatus and presents the heroes of the anti-communist underground. It shows two opposite systems of values and tells the story of the Warsaw insurgents persecuted after the war. In the educational part - the reconstructed cells and targets present the history of resistance and struggle and the totalitarian apparatus of repression in 1944-1956, as well as the history of the struggle for freedom in the years 1956-1989. The thematic section presents executioners, victims and subsequent phases of repression (surveillance, arrest, interrogation, trial, sentence). The information part finally presents the process of restoring memory after 1989.
The reconstructed cells in which the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) soldiers were imprisoned and Warsaw insurgents can be seen from March 2. According to Jan Ołdakowski, this place is a kind of an exclave - although geographically separated from the Warsaw Uprising Museum, it tells about one of those cruelly unjust moments in the history of the Warsaw Uprising - about what happened to young heroes after the war. And yet they imagined this time in a completely different way: that they would walk along Aleje Ujazdowskie, parading, crowds would welcome them. That's how they sang: "Aliens, with a parade, they will go parade, free Poland, which has risen from our blood."
October 1951. The PUBP (pol. abr. Powiatowy Urzad Bezpieczenstwa Publicznego – County Office for Public Security) courtyard in Włodawa. Photo taken by Polish secret police, the UB. Laying down are the dead Kazimierz Torbicz, nom de guerre „Kazik” and Edward Taraszkiewicz, nom de guerre „Żelazny”. In the center, wearing clothes torn by police dogs, is Stanisław Marciniak, nom de guerre „Niewinny”. Prior to the communist amnesty in 1947, he was a soldier in the Józef Strug, nom de guerre „Ordon” unit. He was sentenced to death and was murdered at the Lublin Castle on January 29, 1953.
- The paradox of history consisted in the fact that they did not have to face a parade, but a security parish, says Jan Ołdakowski.
They got to Koszykowa and were detained here sometimes for several hours, and sometimes several months, depending on the ongoing investigation. - There were also wet targets - tells the historian Andrzej Komuda, guide of the Warsaw Uprising Museum. And he adds: "It was a punishment to sit in the water. The cells were deprived of daylight, so the prisoners did not know whether it was day or night."
It was a long-standing thought that the former security goals could be made available to visitors. It all began in 2005, when the Warsaw Uprising Museum organized an open-air exhibition entitled "Parades were to walk", referring to the song "Parasol". The exhibition was under the patronage of President Lech Kaczyński. At Ujazdowskie Avenue, several dozen highlighted portraits of young people were placed, who were persecuted by the communist authorities for belonging to the Home Army, for the struggle for the independence of Poland. - We wanted to pay homage to them. Give them to Aleje Ujazdowskie - recalls the director of the Warsaw Uprising Museum.
It was then that the idea of an exhibition in the basements of the former Ministry of Public Security (Polish: Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego or MBP) was born, where real cathedrals were located. An initiative group was formed, in which there were: Władysław Bartoszewski, Wiesław Chrzanowski, Anna Jakubowska "Paulinka" - prisoners of the security service and Krystyna Zachwatowicz. It was also here that General August Emil Fieldorf "Nil" was detained.
Władysław Bartoszewski
Wiesław Chrzanowski
Anna Jakubowska "Paulinka"
Krystyna Zachwatowicz
- At that time, we visited the cellars of the former detention center at Koszykowa Street - says the director of Ołdakowski. - At one point Wiesław Chrzanowski cried: "Oh! It's my cell! I sat there. " The Cellars then were a repository for the Civil Defense warehouses. Simply put: junk. Crammed with old gas masks, boxes with documents, damp, badly fragrant fungus.
"Visiting those places with people who were held there, I heard a lot of stories. Of course, the detention center in Koszykowa was not the target of death. Here people were interrogated, scorned, tried to break, tortured." However, apart from Jan Rodowicz, "Anoda," a soldier of the "Zoska" Battalion, which at the turn of 1948 and 1949 was tortured by UB investigators and who died here, the prisoners were shot elsewhere, sentences were elsewhere, they were serving their sentences elsewhere. But the cellars at Koszykowa Street were the first place where young insurgents came after the war, where they met with injustice, where they were beaten and tortured. It did not differ from the way they were treated by the Gestapo on Aleja Szucha during the war. Therefore, we wanted to prepare this exhibition and tell the paradox about it. About the fact that the young heroes were not awaited by honors, applause, adoration of crowds, only that they were secretly transported, and if they died, they were secretly tossed, like "Anodę, into foreign graves. Incidentally, if it were not for the fact that people working in the cemetery recognized "Anode" and silently informed the family, it probably would not have found his body - says Jan Ołdakowski. The guide Andrzej Komuda complements that the stay of Jan Rodowicz "Anoda" in the prison in Koszykowa was short and ended tragically - he died during the interrogation, cruelly tortured. - But the official version, which the then authorities gave the family sounded, that he committed suicide by jumping out of the window - adds Komuda.
Jan Rodowicz (7 March 1923 – 7 January 1949), alias "Anoda", was a scout, soldier of the Grey Ranks, the Home Army and of the Armed Forces' Delegation, lieutenant. Rodowicz died on 7 January 1949 during a brutal investigation at the Urząd Bezpieczeństwa headquarters at Koszykowa Street.
Kazamaty przy Koszykowa available for exploration cover 600 square meters. But to create a place that will be visited by people in the future, it was necessary to carry out repairs, ensure air exchange, and build installations. The work was complicated and long-lasting, the goals had to be secured against constant moisture, which caused that a mushroom appeared on the walls.
- It was not only about the walls, "director Ołdakowski emphasizes. - The most important for us were human stories, which immediately began to collect as the idea arose.
Stories about this place and people who were imprisoned here can also be found on the walls in the form of notes, calendars of prisoners, or portraits painted by them. Some behind the glass, separated, often blurred, so the visitors have prepared flashlights. An important element of the exhibition are also souvenirs that were collected. - Great thanks to the holy memory of professor Barbara Otwinowska, who gave us their most. These are small things, because the people who were imprisoned for these purposes knew that they would not stay here longer, that they would not anchor here. Souvenirs testify to the elusiveness of this time. They are all the more valuable that made of bread, everyday objects - adds Jan Ołdakowski.
Among the souvenirs are also those that belonged to people held, inter alia, in prison at ul. Rakowiecka St. in Warsaw, in a prison on ul. November 11 in Warsaw, as well as in prisons in Wronki, Fordon or Krakow. These include, for example, chess from bread, a medallion, a cross, an embroidered gorget with an eagle in the crown, a mouthpiece, a pencil case, a ring of horsehair and toothbrush fragments, fish bone necklaces, heart-shaped boxes or a fragment of a comb.
Items come from a collection of memorabilia that has been run since 2015. Józef Słowińska, a Home Army soldier who fought in the Warsaw Uprising, donated two bread cloths to the museum in Koszykowa, with a sculptured Mother of God and Saint Joseph. "The growaphs offered my friends from detention, on my name day," he says. She was arrested on March 8, 1946, brought to the underworld and closed in one of the cells at Koszykowa Street. She sat there for a few days before being transported to Rakowicka. She was sentenced to 6 years in prison and served her sentence for the day. Today I do not want to go back to those terrible times.
- I did not watch the exhibition on Koszykowa Street and I do not think I will see it anymore. I have my years and related ailments; difficulty in walking. I do not want to think about those times, I do not want to mention them. I want to forget - says Józefa Słowińska in an interview with "Poland."
The former detention center of the Ministry of Public Security (Polish: Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego or MBP) was visited by Wacław Gluth-Nowowiejski, a 92-year-old insurgent from Warsaw. But for him it was not an easy moment when, after 70 years, he was entering his former cell. In an interview with the "Warsaw Visitor", he mentioned that they took him off the street. They arrested him for illegal possession of weapons and because he participated in a group seeking to overthrow the socialist system. - At the turn of the 1940s and 1950s, just at Koszykowa Street and in the 10th pavilion of the Mokotów prison, the investigative machine worked without haste, but successfully, in accordance with the practically tested system: psychic and physical terror, a higher school of resistance breaking. Everyone was guilty according to the saying: "Give me a man, and I will find an article for him," recalled Wacław Gluth-Nowowiejski.
Wacław Gluth-Nowowiejski (Wacek) (born 10 June 1926 in Warsaw) is a former soldier of the Polish Home Army (AK), a participant in the Warsaw Uprising, and after the war, a publicist and author. He was beaten and tortured during interrogation by the Urząd Bezpieczeństwa. After a show trial, he was imprisoned until 1953.
As noted by director Ołdakowski, people who from the beginning of March come to view former security chambers, visit them in a special way.
"Old prisoners come, but also people whose relatives were imprisoned here. They visit longer, trying to contemplate this space. There are also many teachers among visitors who are interested in whether they can come here with classes. This shows how important it was to build the next piece of the story about the museum outside its borders, the next stage in the story in which people instead of finding peace and happiness, got into another nightmare." |
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Post by pjotr on Mar 4, 2019 3:06:11 GMT 1
The Office of Public SafetyThe Security Office (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa,UB), was an office formally appointed to protect state security of the Polish Communist state during the era of Stalinism from from 1945 to 1954 under minister for Public Security general (Generał brygady) Stanisław Radkiewicz, and supervised by Jakub Berman of the Politburo. Stanisław Radkiewicz Jakub BermanI n fact the Ministry of Public Security of Poland (Polish: Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego or MBP) served the purpose of eliminating all forms of resistance in Poland during the period when the communist authorities were formed and perpetuated. The Urząd Bezpieczeństwa was created by the KRN Act of July 21, 1944 on the establishment of the Polish Committee of National Liberation (Polish: Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego, PKWN). The Krajowa Rada Narodowa in Polish (translated as State National Council or Homeland National Council, abbreviated to KRN) was a parliament-like political body created during the later period of World War II in German-occupied Warsaw. It was intended as a communist-controlled center of authority, challenging organs of the mainstream Polish Underground State. The existence of the KRN was later accepted by the Soviet Union and the council became to a large extent subjugated and controlled by the Soviets.
The Urząd Bezpieczeństwa was subordinate to the head of the PKWN security department, from January 1945 - the Ministry of Public Security. Of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland, from December 1954 - Kom. for Security Publ. at the Council of Ministers. In December 1956, the UB was handed over to the min. internal affairs, which changed its name to the Security Service (SB). Until 1954, the Office was managed by S. Radkiewicz. UBP institutions were created immediately after the Red Army entered the Polish lands to the west of the Bug. The first officers of the UBP were communist activists which were trained by the NKVD in the USSR and former Armia Ludowa (AL) soldiers, members of the Polish Workers' Party (Polish: Polska Partia Robotnicza, PPR, a communist party in Poland from 1942 to 1948), often also Nazi collaborators from the Nazi occupation and criminals. The staff consisted of NKVD officers. The primary tasks of UBP included the destruction of all underground organizations with pro-independence orientation. After the first wave of arrests of Home Army officers after the "Burza" campaign, UBP along with the NKVD intensified the penetration of the underground community in search of undisclosed AK soldiers and others. Arrested people of independence organizations were placed in camps in Poland or taken to the camps deep inside the USSR. After the liquidation of the armed conspiracy UBP proceeded to wipe out the independence seeking underground, esp. Associations of "Freedom and Independence". UBP gave great services to the PPR in its fight against the political enemy, such as the Polish People's Party (Polish: Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe), allowing the pacification of villages and the murders of its activists. The Urząd Bezpieczeństwa played a special role during the 1946 referendum, not allowing opposition representatives to participate in electoral commissions and falsifying election results.The Stalinist reign of terrorThe Urząd Bezpieczeństwa was involved in agent activities, surveillance, terror against Home Army soldiers, and the underworld. and opposition politicians. The Urząd Bezpieczeństwa tried to eliminate the resistance of the "cursed soldiers" (Polish: Żołnierze wyklęci) who were opposing the communist authorities by armed combat, targeting communist army officers, UB agents, communist state officials and the communist police, the Milicja Obywatelska. The Urząd Bezpieczeństwa participated in the countryside during forced collectivization and fought against the influence of the Catholic Church.
Infiltrated by NKGB and NKVD agents – the Ministry of Public Security was well known for its criminal nature. From January 1945 (or, July 22), the surviving members of the Home Army laid down their arms, granted an official amnesty (lasting till October 15). Most were arrested by MBP on the spot, tortured and tried for treason. The MBP carried out brutal pacification of civilians, mass arrests (see: Augustów roundup), as well as makeshift executions (see: Mokotów Prison murder, Public execution in Dębica) and secret assassinations. According to depositions by Józef Światło and other communist sources, in 1945 alone the number of members of the Polish Underground State deported to Siberia and various labor camps in the Soviet Union reached 50,000.
Overall, in the years 1944–1956 around 300,000 Polish citizens had been arrested, of whom many thousands were sentenced to long-term imprisonment. There were 6,000 death sentences pronounced, the majority of them carried out "in the majesty of the law". A special disciplinary legislation had been introduced, which allowed for the sentencing of civil persons before military tribunals including young people and children. The courts were concerned with the alleged crimes, not the age and the maturity of its victims. For many years, the public prosecutors and judges as well as functionaries of the Ministry of Public Security, Security Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (SB) and Main Directorate of Information of the Polish Army (GZI WP) engaged in acts recognized by international law as crimes against humanity and crimes against peace. The so-called "Cursed soldiers" of the anti-communist resistance, who opposed the new occupiers and attacked the Stalinist strongholds, were eventually hunted down by MBP security services and assassination squads.[9] The underground structures had been destroyed, and most members of the Armia Krajowa and WiN who remained opposed to communism, were executed after kangaroo trials (staged by Wolińska-Brus and Zarakowski among others), or deported to the Soviet GULAG system.
In 1956 when the era of Stalinism ended in Poland the Urząd Bezpieczeństwa (UB) was abolished after the creation of the new Security Service, the Służba Bezpieczeństwa (SB).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Public_Security_(Poland)pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministerstwo_Bezpiecze%C5%84stwa_Publicznego
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Post by pjotr on Mar 5, 2019 20:56:28 GMT 1
Dear Bonobo,
I don't know what was the motivation, the reason and the fact that and why so many Polish jews after the era of Nazi dictatorial, authoritarian, totalitarian, systematic state terror against specific groups, minorities, professions and classes, in which they themselves as jews had suffered terribly shortly after that terrible 5 years of mass murder, torture, pillaging and the annihilation of their people supported another dictatorial, authoritarian, totalitarian, systematic state terror against specific groups, minorities, professions and classes. This time the Stalinists of the PZPR, the terrible Urząd Bezpieczeństwa, Polish People's Army (Ludowe Wojsko Polskie) and police control of the Milicja Obywatelska, and the paramilitary-police ZOMO (Zmotoryzowane Odwody Milicji Obywatelskiej) since 1956. Was it due to their Sovjet Stalinist indoctrination in the Sovjet Union where Stalin could use them, because they were not ethnic slavic Roman Catholic Poles, but a Semitic ethnic different minority which he could use as puppets (Jakub Berman and Hilary Minc).
The Holocaust (Shoah), the Intelligenzaktion, and the total destruction of Warsaw, Poznań (the fighting between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht left much of the city, particularly the Old Town, in ruins, while the pre-war Jewish population of about 2,000 were mostly murdered in the Holocaust.) and the starvation and elimination of their people the ghettos (established by the Nazi authorities in and German/Austrian Nazi concentration camps in Poland) had hit Polish jews hard.
Jewish survivors returning to their homes in Poland found it practically impossible to reconstruct their prewar lives. Due to the border shifts, some Polish Jews found that their homes were now in the Soviet Union; in other cases the returning survivors were German Jews whose homes were now under Polish jurisdiction. Jewish communities and Jewish life as it had existed was gone. Jews who somehow survived the Holocaust often discovered that their homes had been looted or destroyed.
Some 20,000–40,000 Jews were repatriated from Germany and other countries. At its postwar peak, up to 240,000 returning Jews might have resided in Poland mostly in Warsaw, Łódź, Kraków, Wrocław and Lower Silesia, e.g., Dzierżoniów (where there was a significant Jewish community initially consisting of local concentration camp survivors), Legnica, and Bielawa.
Amidst the raging civil war in postwar Poland, anti-Jewish riots broke out in several cities. Hundreds of Jews were murdered in anti-communist violence. The best-known case is the Kielce pogrom of 4 July 1946, in which thirty-seven Jews and two Poles were murdered.
Where no pogroms occurred, returning Jews still met with threats, violence, and murder from their Polish neighbors, occasionally in a deliberate and organized manner. People of the community frequently had knowledge of these murders and turned a blind eye or held no sympathy for the victims. Jewish communities responded to this violence by reporting the violence to the Ministry of Public Administration, but were granted little assistance.
Next to pogroms you had cases of mob rule and murders of Jewish civilians and attacks on synagogues just after the end of the war in 1944, 1945 and 1946. Poland was not safe for Polish jews who returned from Nazi concentration camps and Ghetto's. The return of the Jewish population was not always welcomed, especially by the antisemitic elements in the populace of Kraków and other Polish cities and towns.
On June 27, 1945, a Jewish woman was brought to a local Milicja Obywatelska police station in Kraków falsely accused of attempting to abduct a child. Despite the fact that the investigation revealed that the mother had left her child in the care of the suspect, rumours started to spread that a Jewish woman abducted a child in order to kill it. A mob shouting anti-Jewish slogans gathered at Kleparski square, but a Milicja detachment brought the situation under control. Blood libel rumours continued to spread. False claims that thirteen corpses of Christian children had been discovered were disseminated. By 11 August, the number of rumoured "victims" had grown to eighty. Groups of hooligans who gathered at Kleparski Square had been throwing stones at the Kupa Synagogue on a weekly basis. On 11 August an attempt to seize a thirteen-year-old boy who was throwing stones at the synagogue was made, but he managed to escape and rushed to the nearby marketplace screaming "Help me, the Jews have tried to kill me". Instantly the crowd broke in into the Kupa synagogue and started beating Jews, who had been praying at the Saturday morning Shabbat service; and the Torah scrolls were burned. The Jewish hostel was also attacked. Jewish men, Jewish women and Jewish children, were beaten up on the streets; their homes were broken into and robbed Some Jews wounded during the pogrom were hospitalized and later were beaten in the hospitals again. One of the pogrom victims witnessed:
I was carried to the second precinct of the militia where they called for an ambulance. There were five more people over there, including badly wounded Polish woman. In the ambulance I heard the comments of the escorting soldier and the nurse who spoke about us as Jewish crust whom they have to save, and that they shouldn't be doing this because we murdered children, that all of us should be shot. We were taken to the hospital of St. Lazarus at Kopernika Street. I was first taken to the operating room. After the operation a soldier appeared who said that he will take everybody to jail after the operation. He beat up one of the wounded Jews waiting for an operation. He held us under cocked gun and did not allow us to take a drink of water. A moment later two railroadmen appeared and one said, "It's a scandal that a Pole does not have the civil courage to hit a defenceless person", and he hit a wounded Jew. One of the hospital inmates hit me with a crutch. Women, including nurses, stood behind the doors threatening us that they were only waiting for the operation to be over in order to rip us apart.
During the pogrom some Poles, mistaken for Jews, were also attacked. The centre of these events was Miodowa, Starowislna, Przemyska, and Jozefa Streets in the Kazimierz quarter. The riots were most intense between 11am and 1pm, calming down around 2pm, only to regain strength in the late afternoon when the Kupa synagogue was set on fire. Polish policemen and soldiers actively participated in these events. Among twenty-five of those accused of inciting racial hatred, robberies, and violence against Jews, twelve were officers. According to the report prepared for Joseph Stalin by the NKVD in Kraków, it was Polish militiamen who sanctioned the violence.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Jewish_violence_in_Poland,_1944%E2%80%931946
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kielce_pogrom
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w_pogrom
Civil war like circumstances in Poland
In 1946, a very intense political struggle was underway in Poland. The magnitude of violence and repression in Poland was larger than anywhere else in East Central Europe, and Poland from 1945 to 1947/48 experienced what can accurately be termed a civil war. Two main political orientations confronted one another. The aim of the first was to put Poland under Soviet influence. The Polish communists gradually tried to increase their influence by resorting to more severe methods to strangle the anti-communist resistance. On the other side, there was the pro-Western political groups that wanted to conduct the free and democratic elections in Poland guaranteed by Churchill , Roosevelt and Stalin in the Yalta Accords of February 1945.
Both sides understood perfectly well that Polish society was dominated by strong anti-communist sentiments. For this reason, the Polish communists wanted to delay the elections. But there was also a problem for the Polish Peasant Party.
The Kielce pogrom touches many problems. The most painful and traumatic of these problems is the existence of anti-Semitism in Poland after World War II. Poles were clearly willing to participate in an act of anti-Jewish violence. Some anti-Semitic attitudes present in Polish society after 1945 had roots in the period before the war. And others were connected to specific post-war developments, including what has been called the "heritage of the war." Edmund Osmanczyk, a Polish writer and journalist, has written about "the generation infected by death". This first post-war generation knew death intimately--death was something tangible and real. It was easy to kill or to allow someone to be killed. Osmanczyk also highlights a corresponding weakness of morality and values.
www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-kielce-pogrom
Many Polish jews left Poland after the war and immigrated to Mandatory Palestine (British Palestine - 1920–1948), after 1948 to Israel, the USA and other Western countries. Many Polish jews left for the West because they did not want to live under a Communist regime. Some left because of the violence they faced in postwar Poland, and because they did not want to live where their family members had been murdered, and instead have arranged to live with relatives or friends in different western democracies.
I (Pieter) try to know the historical truth, by using the methods of looking from different perspectives in a place of territory with various ethnic, groups religions, political affiliations and social classes. So in Poland you have to look from the perspective of the Polish Roman-Catholic majority, and the perspective of the minorities in Poland. Due to the fact that I (Pieter) have Polish Roman-Catholic family (majority) and Polish jewish family (a minority in the family) I am particularly interested in the fate of the Roman-Catholic Polish intelligentsia (my Polish Roman-Catholic family) and my Polish Jewish family (which in fact was both Polish jewish and part of the Polish intelligentsia, because the pre-war and war time and post war time Polish intelligentsia was made of both Polish Roman-Catholics and Polish jews). Almost a third of population in the Second Polish Republic in interwar Poland (1918–1939) came from minority groups: 13.9% Ruthenians; 10% Ashkenazi Jews; 3.1% Belarusians; 2.3% Germans and 3.4% Czechs and Lithuanians.
To be historically accurate Bonobo I have to watch Polish history, which is very complicated, multi-layered, not black and white (but with nuances of black, white, grey shadows, anthracite, different shades of black (Ivory Black, Vine black, carbon black, Vantablack, Super black, the nigh sky black, and the natural black of a black widow spider, a black panther and an American crow, the black of Levi's Jeans 501, a black tie, a black suit an a black dress), beige, ochre (ocher in American English), umber, green (Forest green, Pine green, Olive, Poaceae green, Dark green, Tea green, Avocado green, Fern green, Artichoke and Asparagus green), yellow (Naples yellow, Cream, Lemon chiffon, Royal yellow, Gold, Cyber yellow, goldenrod), orange, red (Cadmium red, Scarlet, Imperial Red, Indian red, Spanish red, Carmine, the red of the leaves in autumn of the beautiful Polish city parks, forests/woods and mountains, Ruby, Crimson, Cardinal red -the color of the high Polish clergy-, Turkey red, Blood red -the enormous amounts of blood that was shed in Polish history, but also the positive use of blood by the present day Polish Red cross, ambulances and Hospitals, purple, pink, blue, Rembrandt brown, Bakelite brown (the colour of old Bakelite radio's), chestnut brown, chocolate brown, khaki brown, rosy brown, Russet (a dark brown color with a reddish-orange tinge), Wood brown, Walnut brown and and new invented colours by artists (like the International Klein Blue invented by the French artist Yves Klein), digital colors, cinematographic and photographic colours. This colour example is an example of the old art student and painter me, who looks and thinks in colours, without boundaries, in the reality of the colour spectrum. Nothing is black and white. Before you get me wrong I love some black and white photography and black and white cinema, like for instance the movies 'Cold war' ((Polish: Zimna wojna) and 'Ida' although these were very sombre films about the harsh time of the Polish Peoples Republic.
The Polish people are like this description of colours and shades, they are an individualistic people, pragmatic and ideological, extreme left, leftwing, center left, centrist, center right, rightwing, far right, fundamentalist religious, Roman-Catholic, Calvinist, Lutheran, Orthodox Christian, secular jewish, progressive jewish, reform jewish, Orthodox Jewish, from mixed Roman-Catholic-Jewish families, agnostc, atheist, New Age, old fashionate traditional, Modern, Libertarian, conservative, progressive and liberal.
What I want to say is that I made the categories two third Polish Roman-Catholic and one third minorities along the line of wikipedia and the mindset of many Poles, Israeli jews, American jews, Germans, British people, French people, other Europeans and probably non-Jewish Polish Americans (and other Americans), Canadians, New Zealanders and South-Africans (you have people of Polish Jewish and Polish Roman-Catholic descent over there). In the ethnic and maybe religious sense these figures might be true, but in the political and social cultural sense they are not true and accurate? Why?
Because the Roman-Catholic ethnic Polish majority and the Ruthenian, Ashkenazi Jews, Belarusians, German, Czech and Lithuanian minorities were pluriform and not united as groups. For simplistic, absolutist, black and white, nationalistic, communist, ethnic and fundamentalistic religious thinking people this is a very irritating and unaccaptable fact.
Look at for instance the Roman-Catholic majority Bonobo of the Interwar period. The May Coup (Polish: Przewrót majowy or zamach majowy) of 12, 13 and 14 May 1926 costed the lives of 1,299 Polish soldiers and civilians (Military killed: 215; Civilians killed: 164; Military and civilian wounded: 920) was mainly a conflict between Roman-Catholic Poles, and partly secular or atheist Poles with a ethnic Roman-Catholic background (Sejmocracy supporters vs Sanacja supporters) on one side and Polish Roman-Catholic christian democrats, Nationalists (Endecja) and the moderate wing of the PSL on the other side.
To look closer at the conflict of May 1926 you saw clearly 2 groups, which is better described in the German section of the Wikipedia ( de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiputsch ) than in the English one ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Coup_(Poland) ), maybe due to the fact that Germans are always gründlich (thorough, in-depth) to use a positive stereotype of Germans for one moment. (1) The Pro-Józef Piłsudski camp (supported by general Gustaw Orlicz-Dreszer) vs (2) the Pro-President Stanisław Wojciechowski and Prime Minister Wincenty Witos (government) camp:
1) The Pro-Józef Piłsudski camp:
- PPS (the Polish Socialist Party; Polska Partia Socjalistyczna)
- Stronnictwo Chłopskie (Farmer Union)
- SL „Wyzwolenie“ (Polish Peoples Party, left)
- KPP (the Communist Party of Poland; Komunistyczna Partia Polski)
- Some Political Parties of minorities
2) The Pro-President Stanisław Wojciechowski and Prime Minister Wincenty Witos (government) camp:
- Narodowa Demokracja (National Democratic Party, Endecja; Roman Dmowski supporters; )
- PSCD (Christian-Democratic party; Polskie Stronnictwo Chrześcijańskiej Demokracji)
- PSL „Piast“ (Polish Peoples Party, moderate)
Józef Piłsudski (5 December 1867 – 12 May 1935) and Roman Stanisław Dmowski (9 August 1864 – 2 January 1939) would be life long political rivals with differing views about the past, present (in their time) and future direction of Poland. Back to the diversity, pluriformity and multi-layered Polish Roman-Catholic society in Pre-War, war time and Post war Poland. Polish Roman-Catholicism has a lot of shades, colours and sides to it. You have the clergymen (Duchowieństwo), monks (Zakon mniszki), nuns (Zakonnice) and thus the Archbishops (arcybiskupi), Bishops (Biskupi), auxiliary bishops (biskup pomocniczi), priests (Kapłani), deacons (Diakoni), chaplains (kapelani), subdeacons (Subdiakoni), Exorcists (Egzorcyści), acolytes (akolitatu), lectors (lektury), ostiaries (doorkeepers; Ostiariusze), and the functions and figures of Secular Canons (Kanonik świecki), apostolic nuncio (Nuncjusz apostolski) (the Roman Catholic diplomat in chuch disputes), the Vicar (Wikariusz), the Superior general (Generał (zakon); the leader or head of a religious institute in the Roman Catholic Church. The Superior General usually holds supreme executive authority in the religious order, while the general chapter has legislative authority), the provincial superior (Prowincjał), former Protonotary apostolic (Protonotary apostolic, a title that existed until 2013), a Novice (Nowicjusz), a postulant (Postulat (zakon)), and the figures of the Abbot (Opat) and Abbess, the head of a monastery, and many other functions Polish Roman Catholics had, have and will have in the future, like theologian (Teolog), church historian, religious Roman-Catholic intellectual (the Roman Catholic Polish intelligentsia with a Roman Catholic theological, Roman Catholic social teaching, Polish Roman Catholic philosophical, sociological, christian democratic and personal ideology, opinion, view of the world and vision about Poland and Europe) and just the Polish Roman Catholic laymen, believers, churchgoers, people who find comfort, consolation, support and strength in their faith and brother and sisterhood, community, cosyness, tradition, celebration of life and the christian message, the symbols of Jesus and Mother Mary and pilgrimages.The purpose of Christian pilgrimage was summarized by Pope Benedict XVI this way:
"To go on pilgrimage is not simply to visit a place to admire its treasures of nature, art or history. To go on pilgrimage really means to step out of ourselves in order to encounter God where he has revealed himself, where his grace has shone with particular splendour and produced rich fruits of conversion and holiness among those who believe."
In Warsaw one day in August 2006 I saw hundreds of people in a street of Warsaw where old fashionate trucks, vans and cars were standing. There were older people, fathers and mothers with little children, young people who looked like teenager and university students in their twenties. Some people looked old fashionate rural, like women with headscarfs, and farmer clothes and men with green and blue dungarees and overalls and heavy working shoes. The groups was probably a mix of Warsaw workers and rural people of farms and thus villages around Warsaw, primary school and highschool children and pious Roman-Catholic university students. It was a mixed crowd of people of different classes and professions and thus looks. I asked them what they were doing there and they told me they were preparing to go on pilgrimage to the Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa to see the Black Madonna of Częstochowa (Polish: Czarna Madonna or Matka Boska Częstochowska, Latin: Imago thaumaturga Beatae Virginis Mariae Immaculatae Conceptae, in Claro Monte ). The Black Madonna of Częstochowa Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa in southern Poland
In that Polish Roman Catholic world, society and community you have liberal (centrist or general) Roman-Catholics, you have progressive Roman-Catholics with a reform agenda (some even having Liberation theology kind of views), socialist Roman-Catholics who believe in the ideals and ideology of Christian socialism ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_socialism / pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socjalizm_chrze%C5%9Bcija%C5%84ski ), and of course last but not least the very influential traditional or conservative Roman-Catholics. An extreme group of Polish Roman-Catholics belong to a National conservative, nationalist version of Roman-Catholicism which merges Roman-Catholicism with ethnic peoples nationalism (nativism), peoples identity, economical nationalism, state nationalism and rightwing Populism. In the latter the ethnic Western-Slavic Polish people merge with Roman-Catholicism, the territory of the Polish station, state and thus country and rejecting in the same time the non-Western slav, Non-ethnic Polish minorities like the Jewish, German, Ukrainian, Belarussian, Tartar, Vietnamese and other minorities. Polish Nationalists like to stress that Poland is one united country which is 100% Roman-Catholic, Conservative, traditional, old fashionate and has no multi-cultural society, no differences, no minorities, no pluriformity and no foreign influence. The reality of course is very different.From that Roman-Catholic, ethnic Western slave Polish people also other groups emerge, like the atheist Polish socialists, Social democrats, secular humanists, secular (non religious, but cultural) Roman-Catholics, radical liberals, social (progressive) Liberals, Anarchists, Libertarians, Feminists, Agnostic people, Paganists (Old Slavic religion followers), New Age people, Polish Buddhists, Polish Bruno Gröning ( www.bruno-groening.org/pl/bruno-groening/biografia-bruno-groeninga/bruno-groening-1906-1959 ) followers and believers, Polish Calvinists ( www.reformowani.pl/ ), the about 300 Bahá'í faith following Poles in Poland and other mythologies, religions or secular philosophies Poles follow. So I want to make it absolutely clear that I don't see the Polish people as one monolythic block with a few flavors. No I (Pieter) see a very pluriform, diverse and in potential rich democracy, which is still developing itself after the partitions, the First and Second World Wars and the difficult Interbellum period between them, and the devasting Stalinist Poland 1944–56, and the difficult general communist Polish Peoples Republic (1956-1989) time after that and the struggle to built a Representative democracy with a Capitalist Market economy and the aim to be part of the West, the EU and NATO. Poland managed to do that with ups and downs, and changing governments from left to right. Today is a test if Poland manages to stay democratic in the Continental-European, American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealandish and British (UK) point of view. Will Poland move into the direction of a independent, Sovereign, autonomic Polish republic, or will it move towards Eastern-European and Central-European autocracy of leaders like Vladimir Putin, Alexander Lukashenko and Viktor Orbán, and thus become a country like the Russian Federation, Belarus or Hungary. Or will Poland will become more like a nation like Germany, France, the UK, the Netherlands or Denmark? Or yet another direction, will Poland become like the present day USA, Israel, Australia or South-Africa? I mention Israel, because nationalism, religious orthodoxy and military power play a role there. A perfect example of that are the close relations between Israel and Hungary for instance and in the same time the close ties between Israel and Austria.
Back to the subject. Not only the ethnic Roman-Catholic Poles do not form a monolythical uniform block, the same counted for the pre-war large Ruthenian, Ashkenazi Jews, Belarusians, German, Czech and Lithuanian minorities. I already stated that above here. The Ukrainian minority was for instance divided between moderate Nationalists and extreme ultra-nationalists who committed terrorist attacks against Polish ministers and targets. The German minority of Volksdeutsche was divided between Pro-Nazi and anti-Nazi elements for instance during the thirties. The Polish Jews were divided between Pro-Government loyalist Orthodox jews of the Agudat Yisrael party, the Labour Zionist Poale Zion ("Workers of Zion") party, the General Zionists (Ogólni Syjoniści), the Folkspartei (the 'Jewish People's Party, folkist party), Fołkiści in Polish), the exclusive Jewish trade unions (which excluded non-Jewish professionals from their ranks after 1918), the General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland (Ogólno-Żydowski Związek Robotniczy "Bund" w Polsce), and the Polish jewish members and activists of the Polish Socialist Party PPS, like Stanisław Mendelson (1858 - 25 July 1913), Herman Lieberman (4 January 1870 – 21 October 1941), Herman Diamand (March 30, 1860 in Lviv – February 26, 1931 in Lviv), the Polish jewish members of the Polish Communist Party (Komunistyczna Partia Polski, KPP) Maksymilian Horwitz (pseudonym: Henryk Walecki; 1877-1937), Adolf Warski (April 20, 1868, Warsaw – August 21, 1937, Moscow), Feliks Yakovlevich Kon (May 18, 1864 – July 30, 1941 in Moscow).
In pre-war Poland you had Pro Sanacja Polish jews and anti-Sanacja Polish jews. The same counted for all other groups.
After the war the Jewish members of the the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP; Polish: Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza, PZPR), the Urząd Bezpieczeństwa (1945–1954), and the Ludowe Wojsko Polskie (the Polish People's Army) contributed to the oppression of the non-Communist Polish Roman-Catholics, Polish jews, Polish Ukrainians, the ethnic German minority which was left and the ethnic Belarussians and Lithuanians in Poland. The Jewish-Polish political and social activist and cardiologist Marek Edelman (Yiddish: מאַרעק עדעלמאַן, born either 1919 in Homel or 1922 in Warsaw – October 2, 2009 in Warsaw, Poland) opposed communism and nationalism in pre-war Poland and in Post war Poland as a member of KOR (Komitet Obrony Robotników; the "Workers' Defence Committee") and Solidarność. The same counts for Polish Jewish historian, essayist, former dissident, public intellectual, and editor-in-chief of the Polish newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, Adam Michnik. Adam Michnik was born in Warsaw, Poland, to a family of Jewish communists. His step-brother on his mother's side, Stefan Michnik, was a Stalinist military judge in the 1950s, who passed sentence, including executions, in politically-motivated trials of members of Polish anti Nazi resistance fighters. But Adam Michnik choose another past and became a dissident.
The Polish Jewish professor and 5th Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Third Republic of Poland (In office from 31 October 1997 – 30 June 2000) Bronisław Geremek (born Benjamin Lewertow; 6 March 1932 – 13 July 2008) was a Polish social historian and politician. From a Polish communist and member of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) he transformed to become a dissident.
In 1950 Geremek joined the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR). He was the second secretary of the Basic Party Organisation (POP) of the PZPR at Warsaw University. In 1968, however, he withdrew from the party in protest against the Warsaw Pact's invasion of Czechoslovakia.
In the 1970s Geremek was considered one of the leading figures in the Polish democratic opposition. In 1978 he co-founded the Society for Educational Courses, for which he gave lectures. While on a Fellowship at the Wilson Center in Washington DC, he met General Edward Rowny who introduced him to Lane Kirkland and Ronald Reagan. In August 1980 he joined the Gdańsk workers' protest movement and became one of the advisers of the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union Solidarność (Polish for "Solidarity") – NSZZ. In 1981 he chaired the Program Commission of the First National Convention of Solidarity. After martial law was declared in December 1981 he was interned until December 1982, when he once again became an adviser to the then-illegal Solidarność, working closely with Lech Wałęsa. In 1983 he was arrested by the Polish authorities.
Polish Round Table Agreement
Between 1987 and 1989 Geremek was the leader of the Commission for Political Reforms of the Civic Committee, which prepared proposals for peaceful democratic transformation in Poland. In 1989 he played a crucial role during the debates between Solidarność and the authorities that led to free parliamentary elections and the establishment of the ‘Contract Sejm’.
Democratic Poland
After a coalition government was formed in October 1997 by the Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS) and the Freedom Union Geremek served as Minister of Foreign Affairs under Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek until 2000.
European Parliament Deputy
In the election to the European Parliament in June 2004 Geremek was elected as a candidate of the Freedom Union, winning the largest number of votes in Warsaw. In the European Parliament he was a member of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.
Prof Geremek was a great believer in the idea of Europe, though he felt that there is a need to create a clear European identity and the need for people to believe in the benefits that Europe can bring to them- not just as nations, but also as individuals.
Another respected Polish jew who was minister of foreign affairs of Poland for a short moment was Adam Daniel Rotfeld. Adam Daniel Rotfeld (born 4 March 1938) is a Polish researcher and diplomat who studied international law and diplomacy in Warsaw (1955–1960). He was Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland from 5 January 2005 until 31 October 2005 when a change of government took place. He served earlier as the deputy foreign minister. While in that position, Rotfeld established the Warsaw Reflection Group on the UN Reform and the Transformation of the Euro-Atlantic Security Institutions, with participation from leading US and European experts and politicians.
Bronislaw Geremek and Tadeusz Mazowiecki, one of the leaders of the Solidarity movement, and the first non-communist Polish prime minister since 1946.
Marek Edelman in his medical practice as a cardiologist in the Polish Peoples Republic
Adam Michnik (Warsaw, 1981)
Adam Daniel Rotfeld
Back to the Urząd Bezpieczeństwa Stalinist terror of 1944-1956. Polish jews were Urząd Bezpieczeństwa members, but Polish jews were also Urząd Bezpieczeństwa victims, like other Poles. These UB guys had survived the Stalinist purges in the Sovjet Union and in Sovjet occupied Poland (the NKVD terror there), they were trained by the NKVD in Moscow or other parts of Russia or the Ukraine in the Sovjet Union or in Poland.
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