Who was Kiszczak?

Czesław Kiszczak died in Warsaw on November 5, 2015. It was feared that he was buried in the Powązki Military Cemetery, but he was buried in the Orthodox Cemetery. Why there? There are many indications that he was Ukrainian – Kiszczak’s biographer Dr. Lech Kowalski tells me.

He began his career in … Austria, where during the Second World War he was sent to forced labor. After the Soviets entered Austria, as a young Communist and the son of a pre-war Communist, he co-organized the militia there. Back in Poland, he joined the Polish Workers’ Party.

He worked in military counterintelligence, even gaining the opinion of a “Gestapo officer” among his own. He was sent to London, where he investigated the milieu of Polish emigrants from military circles. His reports contributed to the arrest and trial, on trumped up charges, of many Polish army officers before September.

In 1957 he graduated from the military school of the USSR and, as he himself pointed out, he was one of the few who had received a higher education without having a high school diploma. After returning to the Polish People’s Republic, he rose through the ranks to become Jaruzelski’s right-hand man. In the 1970s, at the request of Moscow, which considered Kiszczak “controllable”, he returned to military counterintelligence. In 1978, she became deputy chief of staff of the Polish People’s Party.

Czesław Kiszczak was number two during the 1980s dictatorship and Jaruzelski’s right-hand man, who entrusted him with all departments of power except the army. He was one of the 8 people who prepared the introduction of martial law. As with any Mafia structure, Jaruzelski also needed someone who would be a ruthless enforcer of his orders without asking unnecessary questions. Kiszczak was perfect for that. The head of the Home Office took all the dirty work on himself (and his people). The number of arrests, convictions, intimidations, tortures or finally beatings and murders proves that Kiszczak got away with it perfectly.

At the end of the 1980s, he co-founded the concept of the round table and “peaceful transformation”, which was to ensure a soft landing for the communists after the collapse of the system. Shortly after the round table, Jaruzelski appointed him Prime Minister, but following a rebellion, even from the ZSL and the SD, his mission failed. At the request of Tadeusz Mazowiecki, he took the post of head of the Interior Ministry in his government and held it until July 1990, finalizing the destruction of the files of the SB and the Interior Ministry, knowing of his superiors, including Mazowiecki himself, to whom he not only admitted to this practice, but declared that she was doing it “for the public good”.

After 1989, Czesław Kiszczak was tried several times, but never went to prison. His achievements did not prevent Adam Michnik from hailing him as “a man of honor” (from whom Gazeta editor Wyborcza later retired), and many former opponents from defending Kiszczak as the architect of the round table.