"Żydokomuna", "Jewish murderers in Polish uniforms", "Jewish executioners of Poles". If you believe the internet, this is how you should write about judges and investigators of the Stalinist era. In the common mind, only Jews were the "executioners from the UB". How was it really?
According to prof. Ryszard Terlecki in his work The shield and sword of communism. The history of the security apparatus in Poland 1944-1990 , in 1945 95% the security officers were of Polish nationality. , less than 2 percent Ukrainian or Belarusian, 2.5 percent. Jewish and 0.1 Russian.
It was a bit different in the management staff, but Poles also dominated there. Out of 450 people who in the years 1944-1954 were part of the Ministry, and then the Ministry of Public Security 49% were Poles , 37% are Jews and 14% are Soviet citizens.
Also Iwona Kienzler, author of the book Bloody Luna and others , writes:"Not [...] all the torturers of the Stalinist secret police and court murderers had Jewish roots, there were also Poles, often coming from the pre-war intelligentsia, with legal education and practice from the times of the Second Polish Republic." So we recall five Polish torturers of the Stalinist era.
1. "He judges Kryza, there will be crosses"
Roman Kryże was born in 1907 in Lviv. In 1930, he graduated in law from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. He started his career in the judiciary at the Grodzki Court in Grudziądz, where he worked as a trainee, assessor, and then a beginner judge. He took part in the defensive war in 1939 and was taken prisoner by the Germans on September 18, where he spent almost six years.
After the end of the war, he returned to the profession and started working as a judge in Grudziądz. In the summer of 1945, he reported himself to the military justice. He went straight to the First Division of the Supreme Military Court in Warsaw. He found himself there quickly and began to rule on political matters.
Roman Kryże is one of the people responsible for the murder of Witold Pilecki (source:public domain).
While at NSW, has convicted more than 100 political cases concerning members of independence organizations. Among them, there were eight death sentences on Home Army soldiers. Kryże soon became known for his ease in issuing high sentences, including the death penalty.
His infamy was so great that among the members of the conspiracy the saying "Judges Kryze, there will be crosses" began to circulate. In turn, the well-known lawyer and defender in political matters, attorney Władysław Siła-Nowicki, coined the term "hide". Yet another saying was that Judge Kryże had his private cemetery in Służewiec, Warsaw, near the parish of St. Catherine ...
Buried in the Field
Kryże had his share, among others in passing the death sentence on Stefan Ignaszak, Cichociemny, intelligence officer of the Home Army Headquarters, upholding in force three death sentences at ctm. Witold Pilecki and the death penalty of Maj. Tadeusz Pleśniak, a Home Army soldier, member of the "Nie" and "WiN" organizations.
Roman Kryże was a judge of the Supreme Military Court for 10 years - from August 1945 to August 1955. Then he was transferred to the reserve and went to work in the civilian Supreme Court. He became famous again when in 1965 he pronounced a death sentence on one of the accused in the so-called meat scandal.
He retired in 1977 and died in 1983. He was then a lieutenant-colonel. He was buried in Warsaw's Powązki, on the so-called The meadow, where he rested with some Akowcy who he sent to the scaffold ...
2. Pre-war communist
Wlodzimierz Ostapowicz, nicknamed "Judge-death", had even more death sentences on his conscience. Kryży, who came from Stanisławów, graduated in law from the Jan Kazimierz University in Lviv and in 1930 started working in the judiciary, and then ran his own office in his home town.
The torturer Kryże was buried in the cemetery with his victims ... The so-called "On the Field" headquarters in Powązki.
Ostapowicz had already joined the communists then - in 1931 he joined the Communist Party of Western Ukraine. After Stanisławów was taken over by the Soviets in September 1939, he performed various functions in the local administration. Evacuated to the USSR, he served in the Stojbatalions and worked as a laborer and porter. In 1943, he joined the Polish People's Army. First he became an educational officer, and then he was referred to the judiciary. He headed, inter alia, Field Court of the 2nd Infantry Division.
The volatile tribunal of Ostapowicz
On June 1, 1946, he became the chairman of the Emergency Department of the District Court in Białystok. The department traveled around nearby towns and dealt with quick judgments of current affairs, often imposing the death penalty. During 143 days of operation, he sentenced 93 defendants to the highest sentence.
Later, he was appointed head of the Military District Court in Białystok. There he handed down at least 75 death sentences , including soldiers of the Home Army, WiN, NSZ and NZW. His composition was held in Białystok, but also in the field, during show trials which, according to Ostapowicz, had educational impact on the society.
Ostapowicz sentenced to death, among others, a nineteen-year-old soldier of the Home Army, Marian Piekarski, pseudonym "Lynx". The only surviving photo of Piekarski from 1942 taken when she was 15
Ostapowicz then continued his gloomy career in military courts in Warsaw and Wrocław, all the time eagerly handing over the death penalty. One of his associates even called him a "severe psychopath" . He was released from service in 1955. He became an attorney in Wrocław. He died a respected man in 1978. The number of his victims is estimated at over 200.
3. False captain
Just as Włodzimierz Ostapowicz achieved gloomy fame in Białystok, Julian Polan-Haraschin gained a similar opinion in Kraków. As Iwona Kienzler writes in the book Bloody Luna and others :"Although his foreign-sounding name can be found on the lists of the so-called Jewish murderers of the Polish nation, published on nationalist portals, Haraschin was a Pole. "
He was born to a noble teacher family in Krakow. Before the war, he graduated from the Jagiellonian University and started working as a postal clerk. During the September campaign, he was appointed commander of the field mail no. 66 at the Headquarters of the Silesia Fortified Area. He then wore a uniform similar to a military one. One day he threaded silver squares onto the epaulettes, which allowed him to pretend to be a captain, although he had never been in the army.
Julian Polan-Haraschin even pretended to be a distant relative of Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, the future Pope John Paul II
He was taken prisoner by the Germans, but thanks to his father's efforts he was released and returned to Krakow. He worked there in the Transport Bureau of the Monopoli Directorate and was arrested twice by the Gestapo, but not for conspiratorial activities, but for bribery and economic crimes. In December 1945, he was mobilized into the Polish Army and sent to the judiciary, nota bene approving the rank of captain ...
Bloody Julek
He was assigned to the Military District Court in Kraków, where he handled important political cases. Sentenced at least 60 people to death As a result, he was called Bloody Julek in Krakow. He sent soldiers of the independence underground to the scaffold.
The most famous trial in which he participated was the trial against Cpt. Jan Małolepsz, the last commander of one of the post-Home Army armed formations - the Polish Underground Army. The trial was held in Łódź, and Polan-Haraschin appeared there with a predetermined sentence and indictment. Małolepszy was sentenced to death. He died in a cell, possibly as a result of torture.
Kinship of the cardinal's agent
Haraschin left the army in 1951. He worked as a judge and legal advisor, and then became a lecturer at the Jagiellonian University. At the university, he got to the position of the head of the Extramural Study at the Faculty of Law, but his career was interrupted by arrest. Polan-Haraschin accepted bribes from students for passing credits. He also issued false diplomas of graduation. He was sentenced to nine years in prison for this.
To save himself, Bloody Julek first became an informer in prison (the so-called customs agent), then he signed a commitment to cooperate with the SB and was released. As an agent, he worked on the Krakow Church, including Fr. Andrzej Deskur, Fr. Franciszek Macharski and Card. Karol Wojtyła. He was related to Fr. Macharski, which made it easier for him to enter the environment of the clergy. Later he also claimed to be a distant relative of Karol Wojtyła. He was a secret collaborator until the end of his life. He died in Krakow in 1984.
4. Prosecutor of "Inka"
Wacław Krzyżanowski was born on February 3, 1923 in Zarzecze Łukowski in the Lublin region. During the war, he was deported to the USSR. There he went to the 1st Division. Tadeusz Kościuszko and took part in the Battle of Lenino.
It was Wacław Krzyżanowski who demanded the death penalty for "Inka"
Immediately after the war, he graduated from the school of security officers in Łódź and started working at the Military District Prosecutor's Office in Gdańsk as an investigating officer. In 1946, he was an auxiliary prosecutor in the show trial of Danuta Sieikówna "Inka". A 17-year-old nurse in the 5th Vilnius Brigade of the Home Army operating in Pomerania.
Accuser without studies
The secret police from Gdańsk abused "Inka", beat her, stripped her naked, and demanded that her colleagues be released. Krzyżanowski, 23, who was not a lawyer because he had never studied law, demanded the death penalty for the girl. The court granted the request and the Seat Seasons was sentenced. Years later, Krzyżanowski would explain himself as follows:“I was young. Before that, I was not involved in any court case. I was put into the process by chance, without training or preparation. ”
Krzyżanowski was lying - on the same day he prepared indictments in which he demanded the death penalty for two other young people. 19-year-old German Heinz Baumann, who hunted a deer to feed a starving family, and 16-year-old Benedykt Wyszecki, who collected rusty rifles in the fields to play military ...
In the Third Polish Republic, he was the first prosecutor accused by the Institute of National Remembrance of participation in a communist court crime (in 1993). However, he was acquitted in the first and second instance, because the court found that it was impossible to establish unequivocally what role he played in the trials of Bauman and “Inka”. When he died in October 2014, he was buried with military honors, causing a nationwide scandal.
5. Son of Polish land
Stanisław Radkiewicz is also one of the most famous Polish Stalinist torturers. A peasant's son after three years of primary school, he became involved with communism in his youth, when his family was evacuated to Russia during World War I.
His love for the proletariat's homeland was so strong that when the Radkiewiczs returned to Poland in 1922, Stanisław fled back to the USSR across the border. He studied at the Comintern University there and was sent to Poland to organize party structures.
The most important resort
During the war he found himself in the USSR again. He served in the Red Army, and then in the Polish People's Army. When the Polish Committee of National Liberation was established, he took over the leadership of the Ministry of Security, and then the Ministry of Public Security.
This is how Radkiewicz's career began in communist Poland. The Ministry of Public Security he headed was considered the most important ministry and was expanding rapidly. The secret police dealt with fighting the real and alleged enemies of the new regime:parties, political, social and religious organizations, the Church, pro-independence guerrilla units and all the others.
Stanisław Radkiewicz, head of the Ministry of Public Security in 1945–1954, has never been held accountable for his crimes (source:public domain).
Radkiewicz and his two deputies Mieczysław Mietkowski and Roman Romkowski unleashed terror in the country by arresting Home Army soldiers, members of the PSL, PPS, SN and other parties, former soldiers of the Polish Armed Forces in the West, clergy, pre-war political and state activists, "saboteurs" and "subversives" . During the investigations, they were brutally beaten, physically and mentally tortured. After the death sentences were passed, the prisons were executed.
Radkiewicz remained in the position of the head of the Ministry of Public Security for 10 years. It was dismissed only in December 1954, due to revelations revealed by Colonel Józef Light. When, after Gomułka's return to power, attempts were made to hold the activists from the Stalinist period accountable, Radkiewicz avoided punishment, although his subordinates were sentenced. Later it performed various, less exposed functions. He died in 1987