Communists vs. “Reactionary Underground” in Stalinist Poland

In post-World War II Poland, the Office of State Security (UB or ‘the Office’) focused its attention to what was called the “reactionary underground.” The Communists, who ran the Provisional Government, struggled with the opposition. It was the armed resistance, however, that was the Provisional Government’s hated rival.

Communists fight Home Army in Polish “civil war”

From 1944 to 1947, the political balance of power placed the Communist regime at a disadvantage. In mid-1944 the Home Army (AK), which felt the government-in-exile in London was the true ruling force in Poland, numbered between 250,000 and 300,000 soldiers. The Peasant Battalion, which often worked in concert with the AK, had about 158,000 men. The Communist-led People’s Guard claimed a very inflated figure of 40,000. The Soviet Red Army in Poland helped balance affairs for the Communists’ side, but even their commanding presence could not prevent a lengthy and violent struggle that at times took on the appearance of a civil war.

Jakub Berman, a Polish Jew and the number two man in the Communist Polish government (after President Boleslaw Bierut) from 1945 to 1956, describes that early period in post-war Poland: “When we were taking power the situation was unstable and we were fighting a civil war. They shot at us and we, out of necessity shot at them; the shooting was fierce and people were often ruthlessly liquidated. Hundreds of party people, security people, and soldiers from the Internal Security Corps were killed; every one who was suspect was stopped on the road.”

Terror used to liquidate opposition to Communists

During this time, terror was a strategic weapon of the Communists. It was used to extend and tighten their power and influence throughout Poland. The main goal: total liquidation of any and all political opposition. The UB helped in this political struggle through Stalinist terror, terror, and more bloody terror. The proliferation of the terror apparatus was justified by the threat to the existence of the regime: “between 1944 and 1947 the opposition was real, strong, armed, and often ruthless.”

In the midst of this unstable period, about 1,500 Polish Jews were killed. Why were Jews killed in Poland after the Holocaust? Schatz writes, “The wartime German occupation resulted in a barbarization of social life, and Nazi propaganda contributed to the dehumanization of the Jew in the public mind. Against this background, the fact that Jewish Communists were conspicuous in the regime’s side of the power struggle reinforced one of the traditional elements in the image of the Jew, namely, that of a servant of anti-Polish interests.” Thus they were also killed as members of the repressive UB.

Arrest, torture and execution of Home Army heroes

Stalin used Jews in the Office to carry out his plans in crushing resistance. Among them was Jozef Swaitlo (born Fleichfarb). In 1945, Swaitlo took part in the arrests of 16 commanders of the Home Army and two in the Peasant Battalion. From then until his defection to the U.S. in 1953, Swaitlo (nick-named ‘Butcher’) bloodied his hands in his role of torture master in the UB.

Stefen Staszewski said, “When they murdered Home Army people in security service cellars they weren’t maintaining any appearances. And they kept up no appearances when they arrested thousands of people.” Explains Staszewski, “I asked everyone from the gentlemen from security to [Polish President] Bierut, whether it was possible that people in Poland were being beaten, tortured and forced into confessing. They swore to me on their word of honor that it wasn’t so…”

The Home Army was seen by the vast majority of Poles to be heroes of the German occupation and Polish patriots. Many AK members hated the Communists, and fought against them after the end of the war. Most Poles despised the regime that hunted the AK down like dogs, tortured and murdered them in cellars around Poland, and put national heroes on trial.

Among the people who hounded the AK was a Jewish woman, Helena Wolinska Brus. In 1950, Wolinska was working in a Defense Ministry office in Warsaw as a military prosecutor. The mistress of the Communist chief of police, she was well connected in the “new” Poland. That year saw her sign an arrest warrant for General Emil Fieldorf, known by the alias of ‘Nil,’ a hero and the leader of the AK.

Fieldorf was sentenced to death by hanging in 1953 as the result of a secretive and farcical eight-hour trial. Wolinska signed his arrest warrant willingly. She also took part in the arrest of 14 others in the Home Army. “They called themselves partisans,” Wolinska said in 1998, “we called them bandits. It was a civil war.”

She illegally extended Fieldorf’s arrest without formally charging him or producing any evidence. The initial charge against the General was that he violated a law against the “use of force with the aim of changing the character of the Polish state.” It was claimed that Fieldorf was a “fascist-Hitlerite criminal” when the charges were later changed. This change, from a military to a civil court, gave the authorities the power to execute Fieldorf if he was found guilty.

The AK had a division — called Zegota — that took responsibility for saving Jews from the Nazis. A placard from the war reads, in part: “The German murderer is trying to tell the world that it was we who set fire to the Warsaw ghetto and we who murdered Jews, and the part played by the German soldiers in this crime is called ‘armed intervention’….[We] are already sentencing to death [Polish] traitors and the extortionists who give away Jews to the German hangmen, and soon the courts of the Free Polish Republic will carry out a full measure ofjustice against such individuals.”

Ironically, Wolinska arrested Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, the Home Army officer who led Zegota. Several other members of Zegota were also arrested in 1948-9. Bartoszewski, who spent 18 months in prison in the early 1950s without being brought to trial, recalls being shown blank and undated arrest warrants signed by Helena Wolinska. This was proof that he could be held in prison indefinitely.

When asked about Poles who saved Jews during the war being arrested and persecuted by Jews after the war, Jakub Berman said, “It was wrong that that happened. Certainly it was wrong. At that time I didn’t yet have any facts about what this ‘Zegota’ did, it was only later that my brother [Adolf Berman, a leading member of Zegota] told me about it. it was a small group, but very dedicated, and it took enormous risks to look after Jews during the war… .We later released them all.” How long was Zegota leader Bartoszewski in jail? Seven long years.

Source: https://suite.io/eric-brothers/4fzv207