He changed identities like gloves and was able to get out of any trouble. In the Home Army, he headed his own intelligence group. Nobody imagined that this trusted man was actually collaborating with the Gestapo. Until he handed over General Rowecki "Grot" to his death. Why did Ludwik Kalkstein cheat?
To say that Ludwik Kalkstein and the famous 007 agent had a lot in common, perhaps it would be an exaggeration, although there is no doubt that if the former did not turn out to be one of the greatest traitors in the history of Poland, both men could compete with each other on many issues. .
Unfortunately for the history of the Polish nation and state, Kalkstein was the most authentic figure, and his activities during the war and after its end, in some respects, even surpassed the achievements of Her Majesty's best spy. It is enough to mention that when he left the People's Republic of Poland in November 1981 as Ludwik Ciesielski, it was already the 16th name he had assumed.
Portrait of a traitor
Ludwik Kalkstein was born on March 13, 1920 in Warsaw. He graduated from high school there in 1939 and in September left for Vilnius, where he began his underground activity. Already in January of the following year, he was sent back to the German-occupied capital. Initially was just another member of the intelligence network . But that was about to change soon.
Kalkstein was a trusted man of Rowecki's "Grot" (pictured). Nobody expected that he would turn out to be a double agent.
In spring, he launched his own group of informants, codenamed "Hanka" (named after his pseudonym, abbreviated as "H group"). In this organization, the most important people next to him were his brother-in-law, Eugeniusz Świerczewski, and Ludwik's future wife, Blanka Kaczorowska. All three - as time was to show - became disgraced by the traitors of the motherland. Before that happened, however, on November 11, 1941, Kalkstein was awarded the Cross of Valor. It was probably the only episode in his life that appears in a positive light.
Hanka's activity was abruptly interrupted at the end of March or the beginning of April 1942. Kalkstein was then arrested. During the interrogations at the infamous al. Szucha was about to break down and sign a "circus" with the Gestapo.
From the moment of his release in November 1942, Kalkstein, as a spy of the "97", assumed the perfidious role of a double agent. In the following months, he revealed to the Germans the names and whereabouts of the members of the Polish Underground State. The result of his "achievements" until the end of the occupation was impressive. In the years 1942–1943, working in the unit led by SS-Untersturmführer Erich Merten, which was tasked with investigating the Home Army and British interviews, "Hanka" handed over about 500 people to the Nazis - your former friends, commanders and associates.
However, the most spectacular "feat" of this traitor, which resulted in a strong thinning of the ranks of the Polish resistance movement, was the arrest by the Germans of the commander of the Home Army - General Stefan Rowecki "Grot".
Idle conspiracy
As Czesław Brzoza and Andrzej Leon Sowa emphasize, he was "undoubtedly the most outstanding figure of the entire Polish underground, not only military, but also political". The loss of Rowecki, who was arrested by the Gestapo in the morning of June 30, 1943, was a serious blow to the Home Army. Especially since these authors note:
The reality of the occupation did not confirm the popular opinion about the excellent ability of Poles as conspirators. Poles were eager to conspire, but generally they did not do well . (...) The relative ease with which the "dumping" took place resulted not only from the efficiency of the NKVD and the Gestapo, but also from the violation of the applicable rules of work by members of the underground.
Chatteriness, individualism, politicization, personal ambitions, and finally drunkenness - features quite common among Poles - and frequent simultaneous participation in various underground structures were not conducive to ensuring the safety of secret work. The principles of the conspiracy were poorly followed at the highest levels of the underground (Gen. Rowecki himself is a negative example), and even among the Cichociemni.
The underground movement in the Home Army was not organized as well as it was commonly believed (in the photo:Home Army soldiers during the Operation "Tempest" in July 1944).
So it is safe to say that the work preceding the arrest of "Grot" by the Germans was not so difficult for Kalkstein and his companions. However, the moral qualification of "Hanka's" actions is equally uncomplicated. In the Polish underground there was the so-called Code of Civic Morality , a peculiar set of ethical and legal standards to which all Poles were obliged to comply.
It was created in 1941 and contained some interesting laws about the attitude of people like Kalkstein. Well, section I of this document described a catalog of crimes considered to be treason against the Polish state and nation, for which the death penalty was punishable. It is enough to quote two of the six points there to understand why on March 25, 1944, the Special Military Court of the Home Army issued the highest sentence on Kalkstein.
The entire Code was very extensive and concerned many spheres of social life. Therefore, the eminent historian of this period, Tomasz Szarota, notes that:
The postulate of an unwavering and uncompromising attitude towards the enemy (...), after all, served the main goal - defending the national substance, which was in danger of extinction. It is no coincidence that the motto opening the text of the Code was:" The greatest defeat for the nation is its corruption . It leads irrevocably to death. ”
Undoubtedly, Ludwik Kalkstein made his mistake in a way that did not raise any doubts.
A bit of justice
What was the next course of his fate? After the Home Army issued a death sentence on him, he joined the SS and ... took part in the Warsaw Uprising on the side of the occupiers.
After the suppression of the Poles' uprising, he was still in the service of the Gestapo, and after entering the capital of the Red Army, he fled to Krakow. After the war, he established cooperation with the new occupant and changed the black color of the SS uniform to red, symbolizing another principal. Waldemar Grabowski, dealing with the history of the Polish Underground State, notes:
To the uninitiated, it may seem unlikely that someone who was a Gestapo agent during the occupation became an UB agent after the war. And yet it was just like that - those who betrayed their underground colleagues to the Germans, later still denounced the Home Army soldiers to the communist security services . An example can be the most famous Polish traitors of World War II - Blanka Kaczorowska and Ludwik Kalkstein.
This article was inspired by Maciej Siembieda's novel "Gambit", which was published by Agora Publishing House.
For several years, he hid under successive surnames, changing his identity and profession (he worked, among others, as a school head, head of a fishing cooperative or journalist). However, Kalkstein was also finally caught up in the "justice" of the People's Republic of Poland. After his arrest in August 1953, the court sentenced him to life imprisonment, which, when reduced, came down to an eleven-year sentence. The release of "Hanka" from prison in 1965 outraged the circle of former Home Army soldiers. However, the authorities at the time stated that "for procedural reasons it was impossible to reopen criminal proceedings".
It can be noticed with a certain dose of sarcasm that - although the communist services often used the well-known principle of "give me a man and the paragraph will be found" - in the case of Kalkstein, they could not (or did not want to) find a suitable provision to resume the investigation ...
"Happy" ending
Ludwik Kalkstein left Poland in the early 1980s. He went to France and then settled in Munich. It is ironic that he then took the name of Edward Ciesielski, the first husband of his then partner, who escaped from KL Auschwitz together with Witold Pilecki.
Kalkstein died on October 26, 1994 in Munich. Before his death, he applied to the local authorities to restore the original surname. His grave no longer exists, but the ominous memory of his actions dragged on for a long time. General Kiszczak himself was interested in him at the end of the Polish People's Republic.
In the new book by Maciej Siembieda, "Gambit", the fictional Kalkstein translates from his past as follows:" Those were difficult times, then nothing was clear ". But is it really?
Inspiration:
This article was inspired by Maciej Siembieda's novel "Gambit", which was published by Agora Publishing House.
Bibliography:
- C. Brzoza, A. L. Sowa, History of Poland 1918-1945 , Wydawnictwo Literackie 2006.
- W. Grabowski, Kalkstein and Kaczorowska in the light of the UB files , Bulletin of the Institute of National Remembrance, No. 8-9 (43-44), 2004.
- T. Szarota, Occupied Warsaw is a weekday , Reader 1988.
- A. Zadworny, Kalkstein, "Duży Format" (accessed:25/01/2019).