Association of fighters for freedom and democracy

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The Association of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy ( Polish Związek Bojowników o Wolność i Demokrację, ZBoWiD ) was the official Polish state-controlled war veterans' association in the People's Republic of Poland .

history

The organization was mainly founded by Franciszek Jóźwiak in 1949 as an amalgamation of veterans' associations that have existed since 1945. In the first few decades it mainly took in former members of the communist Armia Ludowa as well as communist partisans and inmates of concentration camps. Since the 1960s, former members of the non-communist Home Army ( Armia Krajowa ) from the time of the Second World War have also been accepted.

The association was one of the member organizations in the National United Front ( Front Jedności Narodowej, FJN ). It was officially independent from the Polish United Workers' Party , but was in fact controlled by it. Its membership was 330,000 in the 1970s and 800,000 in 1986.

Under the chairman Mieczysław Moczar , the association played an important domestic political role in the 1960s. It represented a strong base in the power struggle against Władysław Gomułka . Anti-Semitic and nationalist slogans led to the emigration of thousands of Jews still living in Poland. Only when Gomułka unreservedly condemned the Prague Spring and Leonid Brezhnev supported him again did this power struggle fail. In 1971 Moczar had to share the leadership of the association with Wojciech Jaruzelski before he completely ousted him in 1983. The reason was that Poland could not put such a compromised anti-Semite at the head of the resistance veterans on the 40th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising . That makes a bad impression, especially in the western world.

In 1990 ZBoWiD was transformed into Związek Kombatantów Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej i Byłych Więźniów Politycznych (Association of Combatants of the Republic of Poland and Former Political Prisoners).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Laura Hölzlwimmer: 60 years of remembrance of the war and the war for remembering. The example of Poland . In: Nations and their self-images: Post-dictatorial societies in Europe. Wallstein Verl. 2008 p. 116
  2. ↑ Norman Davies: In the Heart of Europe. History of Poland . Munich 2006 p. 47
  3. ^ Manfred Alexander: Small history of Poland . Bonn 2005 p. 342
  4. ↑ Der Spiegel, May 9, 1983

literature