It was hard to survive the rough reality of the Polish People's Republic. Theft and swindles were the order of the day. However, they were not always made only by citizens ... The illustration shows a fragment of a propaganda poster from the times of the Polish People's Republic.
At a meeting with the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party, the US President proudly announced:
- The average American earns $ 2,000, half of which is spent on a living.
- What does he do with the rest? Asked the first secretary.
- We are not going into it - the president waved his hand.
- With us, the average Pole earns PLN 2,000 and spends PLN 4,000 on a living - boasted the First Secretary.
- Where does the rest come from? The US leader asked.
- We don't go into it, replied the 1st secretary.
A joke from the times of Edward Gierek, quoted in the recently published book by Kazimierz Kunicki and Tomasz Ławecki Economic affairs of the PRL , it perfectly illustrates the situation of Poles throughout the period of the People's Republic of Poland. In an economy of perpetual shortages of consumer products, weak money and cyclical price increases, it took a lot of thought. Some - including the authorities - thought so that every now and then another big scandal broke out.
Pies stuffed with sawdust
It all started in April 1964 with an anonymous denunciation to the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party about abuses in the trade in meat. A special investigative team discovered, inter alia, thefts that had been going on for years, replacing better-quality goods with worse ones, forgery of invoices and giving bribes. Over 400 people were imprisoned, including nearly 30 managers of butcher shops. The most serious charges were brought against ten people, and the main accused was 44-year-old Stanisław Wawrzecki, head of the Warszawa Praga company in Miejskie Handlu Mięsem.
The process of the so-called the meat scandal was carried out on an ad hoc basis, provided for by the decree of the Polish Committee of National Liberation of 1945. This was a gross violation of the law and was one of the reasons for the judgment being set aside in 2004. In the photo, a citizen reading the PKWN Manifesto.
The ad hoc trial (a special stricter punishment procedure provided mainly for cases related to violations of state security) was directed by the authorities of the Polish People's Republic, which wanted to throw off the responsibility for the poor supply of shops on fraudsters and speculators. The Draconian sentence was passed on February 2, 1965. Wawrzecki was sentenced to death . The director from Warsaw Praga believed until the end that the Council of State would pardon him and perhaps it would have happened had it not been for the objection of the first secretary Władysław Gomułka himself.
The sentence was carried out on March 19 of the same year. Former president of the Constitutional Tribunal, prof. Andrzej Rzepliński summed it up like this:"Instead of hanging the ham in the shop, they hanged Wawrzecki in prison."
Demonstration of leather tanning
In 1959, an investigation was initiated into the theft of skins, bribery and fencing in the Warsaw Tannery Works. There were 23 defendants in the dock. Among other things, prosecutors asked for two death sentences, but the chairman of the judges, Michał Kulczycki, disregarded the party's guidelines. Instead of death sentences, he sentenced "only" life sentences, and he paid for his insubordination with the ruin of his professional career.
Meanwhile, the authorities turned their eyes to Radom. The main attack by politically motivated prosecutors was directed at the Co-operative of Garbarska Work "Przyszłość" and its president, Bolesław Deda. In total, 24 people were arrested, accused of stealing finished products, tanning leather on their own, seizing PLN 16 million and corruption.
Władysław Gomułka pseudonym comrade Wiesław had a simple way to deal with all the scams of the citizens of the Polish People's Republic. The death penalty for theft - this was the recipe of a communist activist. The photo shows Gomułek at the rally (1956).
In 1960, the Provincial Court in Kielce sentenced Deda to death and two others to life imprisonment. However, there was a tension at the highest level. The President of the Council of State, Aleksander Zawadzki, opposed Gomułka's will and changed the death penalty to life imprisonment. Comrade Wiesław supposedly had a golden mean for all crimes:"It is enough if we hang a few scandals and the economic scandals will end." However, not everyone thought the same.
When people lived a more prosperous life
In the decade of Gierek, when "Poland grew in strength and people lived more prosperously," even the scandals took on a European format. It wasn't about crude twists on meat or skins anymore. Now what mattered was gold, silver, jewelry, antiques, western cars, furs, and "hard" currency. The most famous case - dubbed the "goldheads scandal" by the press - broke out in the early 1970s, when the new head of the Ministry of the Interior, Franciszek Szlachcic, demonstrated the determination of Edward Gierek's team to eradicate social pathologies.
Witold Mętlewicz, an employee of the Warsaw-based "Desa", a state-owned company dealing with commission sale of works of art, was hailed as the leading blacksmith among the "goldheads". Ultimately, Mętlewicz was sentenced to 25 years in prison and a millionth fine, but immediately after his arrest he remained silent for a long time. It didn't start pouring down until October 1973. He confessed, inter alia, to smuggling 103 canvases of Polish, German and Dutch painters to the West. Diplomats, mainly from the Brazilian embassy, turned out to be an efficient transit channel. Their luggage was not checked by customs.
Has Gierek's team really turned out to be more effective in suppressing "social pathologies" than the executors of Gomułka's orders? The photo shows Edward Gierek visiting the State Agricultural Farm in Rząśnik.
The gang brought gold to Poland, which it sold profitably. It was estimated that the value of trading in gold and foreign currencies of Mętlewicz himself amounted to PLN 444 million , counting at the official, lowered exchange rate of PLN 24 per dollar. For comparison:the average salary at that time was PLN 2,500.
Communist intelligence and brothers from hell
There is no doubt that in the scandals of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, people of power grew rich and took virtually no responsibility for it. For who could afford the best cold cuts, leather goods, gold or antiques, if the party nomenclature was not well-rewarded? All this practice, however, can be considered a thieving guerrilla, inscribed in the system "rightly passed." Institutional theft, organized by the special services of the People's Republic of Poland, is another thing. Such cases include the biggest scandals of the 1970s and early 1990s, including the "Żelazo" and FOZZ scandals.
As the authors of the book Economic affairs of the People's Republic of Poland write, "Żelazo" (a rather perverse name, because it was about precious metals) is a glaring example of the criminal cooperation between the communist intelligence and gangsters - the Janosz brothers who temporarily lived in West Germany. They carried out the theft, assaults and murders, and shared their gains with clients from Warsaw, who took care of their impunity. Loot in the form of jewelry, gold bars, money and cars was appropriated by the people of power.
More than one economic scandal took place in the Gierek decade. This time, however, it was primarily state authorities that were involved in them. The photo shows the then ministers of the Ministry of the Interior:Mirosław Milewski (on the left) and Franciszek Szlachcic (on the right).
At the end of the 1970s, the communist intelligence was headed by General Mirosław Milewski (Minister of Internal Affairs at the beginning of the 1980s). According to his testimony before the Central Committee of Party Control of the Polish United Workers' Party, it appears that the greater part of the 200-kilogram "golden treasure" stolen by the Janoszes in the West was appropriated by leading comrades, including the First Secretary of Gierek and his wife Stanisława and many other "departmental people". They were not punished for it and the whole case was covered up.
Comrades capitalists
Due to the enormous amounts of money, the "mother of scandals" is sometimes called the biggest scam from the decline of the People's Republic of Poland and the beginning of the Third Polish Republic, the FOZZ scandal. The main task of the Foreign Debt Service Fund was to secretly buy out Polish debts by people, companies and banks. Secret, because such an operation was against international law.
The FOZZ was established in 1989, but the debt purchase was to take place in 1986-1988. It was made up of all Polish exporters earning in foreign currencies. Most of the money (several billion dollars) - instead of reducing Polish debt in the West - ended up in the secret accounts of high-ranking combinators. Thus, many "capitalist" fortunes were born in the second half of the 1980s, and the theft of national wealth came to be called "enfranchisement of the nomenklatura".
Today, more is known about financial swindles carried out after 1989, as they have been the subject of several investigations and checks by the Supreme Audit Office. The commissioner of the Tax Chamber in Warsaw, Michał Falzmann, found the scandal. He discovered a $ 3.5 billion scam, but the case was classified and he said goodbye to his job. After he disclosed his findings to the media, a scandal broke out .
The circumstances of Walerian Pańka's death raised doubts. The then president of the NIK died in the accident of the government lance just four days before presenting the results of the inspection related to the FOZZ scandal to the Sejm of the Republic of Poland. The photo shows a plaque commemorating the Lady in the parish church in Turzym Pole.
Falzmann, 38, died suddenly of a heart attack. His friends are convinced that it was not a natural death. The death of the President of the Supreme Audit Office, Walerian Pańka, seems to be equally mysterious. He died in a strange accident of a government lance. The surviving limo driver soon died of a heart attack, as did the two policemen who arrived first. Officially:they went fishing and drowned in the pond…
During the investigation of the FOZZ, the amount of embezzlement "increased" to $ 10 billion. Trials, appeals and cassations lasted as long as 16 years. Ultimately, in 2009, the judgment became final. The director of the FOZZ, Grzegorz Żemek (9 years old) and deputy director Janina Chim (6 years old), were sentenced to the highest penalties. Dariusz Przywieczerski, director of Universal, the privatized foreign trade headquarters, should have served 2.5 years. The man considered to be the mastermind behind the whole affair, however, escaped to the USA and did not suffer any punishment.