Jozef Cyrankiewicz

Józef Cyrankiewicz (around 1960)

Józef Adam Zygmunt Cyrankiewicz (born April 23, 1911 in Tarnów , Galicia ( Austria-Hungary ), † January 20, 1989 in Warsaw ) was a Polish politician of the PPS , from 1948 of the PZPR . He was Prime Minister from 1947 to 1952 and from 1954 to 1970, then Chairman of the State Council of the People's Republic of Poland until 1972 .

Life

Józef Cyrankiewicz came from a family close to the National Democrats . During his law studies at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow , he came into contact with the socialist movement and joined the Polish Socialist Party (PPS). From 1935 to 1939 he was a member of the District Workers' Committee in Krakow.

Resistance during the German occupation

Cyrankiewicz was arrested during the German occupation in 1941 and was then an inmate of Auschwitz concentration camp until January 1945 . In Auschwitz he was a leader in the camp resistance of a Polish group and then in the Auschwitz combat group . After he was transferred to Mauthausen concentration camp , he was also a member of the camp resistance there.

While the texts were being edited in the main camp under Cyrankiewicz, the people around Witold Pilecki ( Association of Military Organizations (pln. Związek Organizacji Wojskowej , ZOW for short)), who had voluntarily gone to the concentration camp as a fighter, operated a small secret transmitter in the camp hospital with others, who transmitted this news to Cracow. From Krakow they were sent by radio to the government- in- exile in London, but without the hoped-for political effect on the Allies.

Career in the People's Republic of Poland

After the end of the war, Cyrankiewicz was appointed General Secretary of the PPS and was Minister without Portfolio from 1946–1947 . From 1947 to 1972 he was also a member of the Sejm . In the run-up to the Stalinization of Poland, Cyrankiewicz was one of the proponents of unconditional submission to the communist party. After the opponents of an alliance had been eliminated, the PPS and PPR merged to form the PZPR . Cyrankiewicz received the post of Prime Minister of Poland, which he held from 1947 to 1952 and from 1954 to 1970. From 1952 to 1954 he was vice premier. From 1948 to 1971 he was also a member of the Central Committee and the Politburo . In 1956 he was one of the unconditional supporters of the suppression of the popular uprising in Poznan .

Together with Otto Grotewohl , he signed the Görlitz Agreement with the German Democratic Republic in June 1950 to establish the Oder-Neisse border . On December 7, 1970, Cyrankiewicz signed for Poland and Willy Brandt (who had previously kneeled in front of the memorial for the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 ) for the Federal Republic of Germany in Warsaw the treaty on the basis of the normalization of their mutual relationship , with West Germany recognized the Oder-Neisse border.

Two weeks later, after the fall of Władysław Gomułka , Cyrankiewicz was also ousted and deported to the meaningless post of State Council Chairman for two years . In the following years he acted as chairman of the All-Poland Peace Committee .

In 1948 Cyrankiewicz testified in a trial against the anti-communist Polish resistance fighter Witold Pilecki, which was later determined to be a judicial murder . Pilecki was rehabilitated in 1990, and those involved in the process were found guilty in 2003.

Cyrankiewicz was married to actress Nina Andrycz from 1947 to 1968 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bruno Baum : Resistance in Auschwitz. VVN , Berlin 1949; Kongress, Berlin 1957 & 1962. (Pilecki is not mentioned. C. is mentioned positively throughout the editions. About the sender: 1949, p. 32f .; 1962, p. 56f)
2. ↑ Christoph Dieckmann: He also knelt for us , in: weekly newspaper Die Zeit , Hamburg, No. 49, December 2, 2010, p. 21