Leon Kozłowski

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Leon Kozłowski (1932)

Leon Tadeusz Kozłowski (born June 6, 1892 in Rembieszyce ( Małogoszcz ), † May 11, 1944 in Berlin ) was a Polish prehistoric , politician and prime minister .

Life

Studies and professional career

Main building of the Lviv University

After his family moved to Galicia , he began studying archeology at the University of Lviv in 1914 . During his studies he became a member of the shooting association "Strzelec" ( Związek Strzelecki "Strzelec" ) and the association of progressive youth.

After the First World War and the Polish-Soviet War , he first finished his studies at the University of Lviv, before becoming professor of archeology there in 1921 and thus first full professor of this subject. At the same time he was head of the Faculty of Prehistory and Protohistory from 1921 to 1931 and again between 1935 and 1939 . As a historian and archaeologist, he made a name for himself as a representative of neo-autochthonism about the Lusatian culture and the origins of the Slavs .

First World War and the first years after independence

After the beginning of World War I , he joined the 1st Brigade of the Polish Legions ( Legiony Polskie ) , which was under the command of Józef Piłsudski , and served there in the 1st  Uhlan Regiment . After the oath crisis of July 1917, in which parts of the Polish legions rejected the oath on the troops of the Central Powers , he joined the Polish Military Organization ( POW , Polish Polska Organizacja Wojskowa ) in order to subsequently manage the future cadres of the Polish Armed Forces ( Wojsko Polskie ) .

After the independence of the republic, he volunteered in the Polish Army on November 22, 1918, where he was a fighter with awards during the Polish-Soviet War from 1920 to 1921. He was also an active member of various social and political organizations such as the Society for the Restoration of the Republic. As such, he was involved in founding the non-party bloc of government supporters ( Bezpartyjny Blok Współpracy z Rządem ) in 1928 .

His actual political career also began in 1928 when he was elected Member of Parliament ( Sejm ), where he represented the interests of the BBWR until 1935.

Minister and Prime Minister

In March 1930 he was appointed Minister for Agricultural Reforms by the founder of the BBWR and then Prime Minister, Walery Sławek . He held this office until 1932. He was then from 1932 to 1933 in the cabinet of Aleksander Prystor Undersecretary in the Ministry of Finance .

On May 15, 1934, he succeeded Janusz Jędrzejewicz as Prime Minister himself . From June 15 to 28, 1934, he also temporarily took over the office of Minister of the Interior. His reign was particularly marked by a high budget deficit and the rearmament of Germany. He held the post of Prime Minister until his replacement by Sławek on March 28, 1935. Due to the insistence of Marshal Piłsudski, all ministers in his cabinet also took up offices in the new government.

In 1935 he was elected senator . Even after Piłsudski's death on May 12, 1935, he remained politically active and, as a representative of the left within the Sanacja, in particular a supporter of Sławek. However, when this was unsuccessful in the race to succeed the marshal, Kozłowski returned as a professor at the University of Lviv. In 1937 he was involved in the formation of the National Unity Camp ( Obóz Zjednoczenia Narodowego ), but had no political influence.

Second World War

Even after the outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939, he stayed in Lviv, where he was soon arrested by the Soviet secret service NKVD . He spent almost two years in Soviet prisons. He declined the offer to be released to write reports on Polish politicians and army leaders for the NKVD. He was then tortured and had one eye knocked out. A little later he was sentenced to death for “anti-Soviet activities” , but the sentence was commuted to ten years of forced labor.

However, he was released due to the Sikorski-Majski Agreement between the Polish government- in- exile in London and the Soviet Union to jointly fight the “Third Reich” of July 30, 1941. He reported to the Anders Army , the Polish units that Lieutenant General Władysław Anders set up in the southern Russian city of Buzuluk , but was not accepted as a soldier because of his poor health. He then decided to find his way to his family, which he suspected to be near Krakow . Without a permit he left the Polish units, accompanied by a local Polish officer he was smuggled into the General Government, where he reported to the German occupation authorities. As he reported on his NKVD imprisonment at a press conference in Berlin a little later, it was suspected in the Polish exile press that he had been selected to head a Polish puppet government following the example of the Norwegian Vidkun Quisling ; he should have won the Poles as allies for the fight against the Soviet Union. However, there is no evidence for this version. Nevertheless, a field court of the Polish armed forces set up in the Soviet Union sentenced him to death. Its commander, General Władysław Anders , defended the verdict in his “Memoirs”.

In May 1943, Kozłowski was brought to the site of the Katyn massacre by the German authorities as an expert . Before leaving, according to reports from contemporary witnesses, he expressed doubts about the representation of the Reich Propaganda Ministry under Joseph Goebbels that it was a crime by the Soviet secret police NKVD . However, after visiting the mass graves and talking to members of the Polish Red Cross expert commission headed by forensic doctor Marian Wodziński , he changed his mind: he was now convinced of the Soviet perpetrators. The daily newspaper "Goniec Krakowski", which was brought out under German control, quoted him as saying that he recognized acquaintances among the victims in the mass graves, including professors from Lemberg and ministerial officials from Warsaw.

While still in Katyn, Kozłowski reported his impressions in French to Radio Paris, which is also under German control. At the same time a delegation of international writers came to Katyn. The Belgian Pierre Hubermont left detailed notes on his talks with the former Polish prime minister. He accused the writers from Western Europe of underestimating the "danger of Bolshevism".

In the last years of his life, according to reports from acquaintances, Kozłowski was seriously ill with alcohol. In May 1944, while interned in Berlin, he was wounded in one of the Allied air raids and died as a result of these injuries.

Fonts

  • The Lusatian culture and the problem of the origin of the Slavs . Lemberg 1925 ( Kultura łuzycka a Problem pochodzenia Słowian )

Web links

  • Biography on the homepage of the government chancellery (Polish)

Footnotes

  1. Sebastian Brather : Archeology of the Western Slavs , 2001
  2. Heinrich Beck u. a .: On the history of the equation "Germanic-German" . 2004
  3. ^ Wiebke Rohrer: Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archeology in the German Province of Upper Silesia and the Polish Silesian Voivodeship between 1918 and 1933 . In: Yearbook of the Federal Institute for Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe , 2004
  4. My Friends… . In: TIME magazine of November 12, 1934
  5. ^ Wprost 2/2006.
  6. ^ Nowy Kurjer Warszawski, December 23, 1941, p. 1.
  7. ^ Maciej Kozłowski: '' Sprawa premiera Leona Kozłowskiego. Zdrajca czy ofiara? '' Warszawa 2005, p. 205.
  8. raporty z ziem wcielonych do Rzeszy III (1942-1944) . Pod red. Z. Mazura, A. Pietrowicz, M. Rutkowskiej. Poznań 2004, p. 105.
  9. ^ Władysław Anders: Bez ostatniego rozdziału. Wspomnienia z lat 1936-1946. Warsaw 2007, p. 149.
  10. a b Tomasz Wolsza: "To co wiedziałem przekracza swją grozą najśmielsze fantazje". Wojenne i powojenne losy Polaków wizytujących Katyń w 1943 roku. Warsaw 2015, p. 40.
  11. Gdzie występuje bolszewizm - tam leje się krew, in: Goniec Krakowski , 30/31 May 1943, p. 2.
  12. Tomasz Wolsza: "To co wiedziałem przekracza swją grozą najśmielsze fantazje". Wojenne i powojenne losy Polaków wizytujących Katyń w 1943 roku. Warsaw 2015, pp. 18-19.
  13. Pierre Hubermont: Khatyn ce n'est pas Katyn. Brussels 1976, pp. 27, 38-43.