Wojciech Jaruzelski

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Wojciech Jaruzelski (2006)
Jaruzelski's signature
Wojciech Jaruzelski (1968)
Jaruzelski with Nicolae Ceaușescu

Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski [ ˈvɔjtɕɛx ˈvʲitɔlt jaruˈzɛlskʲi ] ( listen ? / I ) (born July 6, 1923 in Kurów near Lublin ; † May 25, 2014 in Warsaw ) was a Polish politician and army general . From 1981 to 1989 he was chairman of the Polish United Workers' Party , from 1981 to 1985 Prime Minister of the People's Republic of Poland and from 1985 to 1990 the head of state of Poland ( Chairman of the State Council of the People's Republic of Poland from November 6, 1985 to July 19, 1989 and President from July 19 1989 to December 22, 1990). Audio file / audio sample

Life

Until the end of World War II

Jaruzelski came from a family of the Catholic aristocracy and grew up near Białystok in what is now northeastern Poland. He spent his school days in a Warsaw Mariana boarding school in Bielany . After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, the family fled to Lithuania and lived in Vinkšnupiai near Vilkaviškis ; In June 1941 she was deported to the Altai Mountains by the Soviet secret police NKVD after the invasion of the Red Army . Jaruzelski and his father had to do forced labor . During this forced labor as a woodcutter in the Siberian winter, he suffered snow blindness , which permanently damaged the cornea of his eyes. That is why he usually wore dark glasses later in public. In July 1943 Jaruzelski joined the Berling Army in the Soviet Union and fought in World War II . After the end of the war he was trained at the Polish Infantry College and at the General Staff Academy. There he committed himself as an informant for military intelligence .

In the People's Republic of Poland

Jaruzelski joined the Polish United Workers' Party ( PZPR ), the former Polish Communist Party , in 1947 . Jaruzelski's military career was promoted by Defense Minister Konstantin Rokossowski , Marshal of the Soviet Armed Forces during World War II.

Just 33 years old, Jaruzelski was promoted to the youngest Polish general in 1956. In 1964 he became a member of the Central Committee of the PZPR and, in 1968, finally Minister of Defense . Also in 1968 he played a leading role in the “cleansing” of the Polish army as part of the anti-Semitic smear campaign Mieczysław Moczar and the invasion of the Warsaw Pact states to end the “ Prague Spring ”.

In 1981, when Lech Wałęsa's trade union Solidarność began to gain national and international fame, Jaruzelski became Prime Minister of Poland on February 11 and his successor on October 18, when Stanisław Kania resigned after criticizing his party leadership during a Central Committee meeting as the first secretary of the PZPR. On December 13th, he declared martial law to break the growing influence of Solidarność and because it had planned mass demonstrations for December 17th.

However, Jaruzelski's plan to smash Solidarność through a policy of massive repression and restore domestic political stability failed. The union continued to work underground. Jaruzelski remained Prime Minister of Poland until November 6, 1985; Zbigniew Messner followed him (list here ). From 1985 to 1989 he was Chairman of the State Council.

After a wave of strikes and negotiations at the round table , Solidarność had to be recognized again in April 1989; On June 4, she won the maximum number of seats allotted to her in the partially free elections. Due to the compromise reached with the opposition at the round table, Jaruzelski was president from July 1989 to December 1990 . When he was elected on July 19, 1989 , he received only one vote more than the required majority. In April 1990 he successfully urged the Soviet head of state and party leader Mikhail Gorbachev to admit the Soviet perpetrators of the Katyn massacre , after he had previously defended the official reading that the Germans were the perpetrators. His successor in office was Lech Wałęsa in December 1990 .

In the III. Polish Republic

On April 17, 2007, a case was opened against Jaruzelski, Czesław Kiszczak (then Head of the Military Security Service), Stanisław Kania (former General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party) and six other members of the National Salvation Military Council on April 17, 2007. Prosecutors from the Institute for National Remembrance (IPN) in Katowice, which is responsible for dealing with Nazi and Communist crimes , had previously investigated the defendants for two and a half years, and on March 31, 2006, he was charged with communist crimes . Jaruzelski, who declared martial law on December 13, 1981, faced a prison sentence of up to ten years if convicted of "leading a criminal organization".

In November 1997 it became known that General Jaruzelski had asked the Soviet Union to intervene in an emergency before martial law was declared in 1981. This was brought up again in December 2009 because it would have meant high treason and could play an important role in the court proceedings against Jaruzelski, which had been ongoing since September 2008, in which his responsibility for the crimes of martial law should be clarified.

In February 2008 it became known that Jaruzelski was seriously ill. He was treated in a Warsaw military hospital because of severe pneumonia and heart problems . In March 2011 he was diagnosed with lymphoma .

Jaruzelski's grave on January 4, 2015

Jaruzelski died on May 25, 2014, a few weeks before his 91st birthday, in Warsaw. After his cremation, his urn was buried on May 30th in Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery .

Political controversy

The debate about his role remains lively. As a pensioner in Warsaw, Jaruzelski took an active part in this. In particular, it is controversial to what extent the imposition of martial law in 1981 was caused by pressure from the Soviet Union. From Moscow's point of view, a worsening of the situation in Poland should have been unacceptable and in the worst case would have resulted in an intervention like 1968 in the Czechoslovak Republic or 1956 in Hungary : Against this background, the imposition of martial law by Jaruzelski provided the “national solution to the Polish problem Furthermore, it is discussed whether Jaruzelski was involved in the peaceful transfer of power from 1989 onwards or whether he had to allow it to happen solely because of internal (Solidarność, threatened state bankruptcy ) and external pressure ( perestroika in the USSR ).

Jaruzelski apologized in August 2005 during a public discussion in Prague for the involvement of the Polish army in ending the “Prague Spring”.

family

Jaruzelski's wife Barbara, whom he married in 1960, had a doctorate in German . As he explained to his daughter Monika, a journalist for a fashion and lifestyle magazine, she was the only woman he got to know better. Monika Jaruzelska wrote an autobiographical book entitled “Comrade Fräulein” ( Towarzyszka Panienka ), in which she described her youth and student years as the daughter of the “most hated man in the country”.

Honors

literature

Web links

Commons : Wojciech Jaruzelski  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. Diariusz . Retrieved June 15, 2019.
  2. ^ A b Thomas Urban : Tragic figure of Polish history (To the death of Wojciech Jaruzelski) . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , May 25, 2014; Retrieved July 7, 2017.
  3. Paradoks, czyli życie Wojciecha Jaruzelskiego . onet.pl, May 27, 2015.
  4. Najbardziej haniebna interwencja układu warszawskiego . ( Memento of the original from May 30, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. newsweek.pl, May 14, 2015. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / historia.newsweek.pl
  5. ^ Siegfried Kogelfranz, Andreas Lorenz, Andrzej Rybak: That was psychological torture. Ex-President Wojciech Jaruzelski on martial law and the risk of intervention in Poland in 1981 . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1992, pp. 181-194 ( Online - May 11, 1992 ).
  6. Reinhold Vetter: Poland's stubborn hero. How Lech Wałęsa outwitted the communists. Berliner Wissenschaftsverlag, Berlin 2010, pp. 168–175.
  7. Andrzej Przewoźnik / Jolanta Adamska: Katyń. Zbrodnia prawda pamieć. Warsaw 2010, pp. 435-439.
  8. Jaruzelski has to go to court over martial law. In: Die Welt , April 17, 2007.
  9. Ex-head of state Jaruzelski is to be demoted because of martial law. Welt Online , February 5, 2007.
  10. ^ Poland: Indictment against General Jaruzelski. ( Memento of the original from May 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Zeit Online , April 17, 2007.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zeit.de
  11. ^ Antoni Dudek: Bez Pomocy nie damy rady ( Memento from December 29, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 391 kB) Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, December 8, 2009 (Polish).
  12. IPN: generał prosił o pomoc ZSSR. In: TVN24 , December 8, 2009 (Polish).
  13. Ex-dictator Jaruzelski is dead. Spiegel Online , May 25, 2014.
  14. Pogrzeb called Wojciecha Jaruzelskiego . WP.pl, May 30, 2014.
  15. Ulrich Krökel: Rogue or Revolutionary? fr-online.de , July 5, 2013
  16. ^ Antoni Kroh: Praga. Przewodnik. Oficyjna Wydawnicza Rewasz, Pruszków 2007, p. 50.
  17. ^ Ostatni wywiad z Jaruzelskim. “Moim życiorysem można obdzielić kilka osób” . onet.pl, May 26, 2014.
  18. Monika Jaruzelska o ojcu . dziendobry.tvn.pl, April 15, 2013.