Polish 1968 political crisis
Encyclopedia
The Polish 1968 political crisis, also known in Poland
as March 1968 or March events pertains to the major student
and intellectual protest
action
against the communist
government of the People's Republic of Poland
. The crisis resulted in the suppression of student strikes by security forces in all major academic centres across the country and the subsequent repression of the Polish dissident movement, as well as a mass emigration following the "anti-Zionist
" campaign waged by General Secretary Władysław Gomułka. The protests coincided with the events of Prague spring
in neighboring Czechoslovakia
– raising new hopes of democratic reforms among the intelligentsia – and culminated in the Warsaw Pact
invasion of Czechoslovakia on 20 August 1968.
The government's anti-Jewish campaign began already in 1967. It was a well-orchestrated response to the Soviet withdrawal of all diplomatic relations with Israel
after the Six Day War – with factory workers across Poland forced to publicly denounce Zionism. The subsequent purges within the communist party, led by Interior Minister Mieczysław Moczar (b. Nikola Demko) and his faction, failed to topple Gomułka's government, but resulted in an actual expulsion from Poland of thousands of individuals of Jewish ancestry, including professionals, party officials and the secret police functionaries blamed "for a major part, if not all, of the crimes and horrors of the Stalinist period." Before the end of 1971, 12,927 Poles of Jewish origin emigrated. On the 30th anniversary of their departures a memorial plaque was placed at Warszawa Gdańska train station, from which most of exiled people took a train to Vienna
.
– were reflected in the East
by the events of the Prague spring
which began on 5 January 1968. A growing wave of protests in Czechoslovakia marked the highpoint of a broader series of dissident social mobilization. The protests of the workers within the communist framework seemed to recall the 1956 protests in Poland. Numerous events of protest and revolt, especially among students reverberated across the continent in 1968, but many followed rather than preceded the Polish crisis.
A growing crisis in Communist Party control over universities, the literary community and intellectuals more generally marked the mid-1960s. Among those persecuted for their political activism on campus were Jacek Kuron
and Adam Michnik
.
, (Dziady
, written in 1824), directed by Kazimierz Dejmek
at the Polish Theatre in Warsaw
, on the grounds that it contained Russophobic and "anti-socialist" references. The play had been performed 14 times, the last time on January 30. Dejmek was expelled from the Communist Party and later fired from the National Theatre. – He returned to his job in Warsaw as an artistic director only 5 years later.
The Warsaw Writers' Union condemned the ban on March 2, followed by the Actors' Union. A crowd of some 1,500 students protesting at Warsaw University on March 8 was met by attacks by the riot police. Within four days, protests spread to Kraków
, Lublin
, Gliwice
, Wrocław, Gdańsk
, Poznań
, and Łódź. Bands of Communist party "worker-squads" attacked the students, followed by police in Warsaw and Lublin. Mass student strikes took place in Wrocław on March 14–16, Kraków on March 14–20, and Opole. A call for a general strike
was issued from Warsaw on March 13. A hardline speech by Władysław Gomułka on March 19 cut off the possibility of negotiation. Further student protests, strikes and occupations
were met with the mass expulsion of thousands of participants. National coordination by the students was attempted through a March 25 meeting in Wrocław; most of its attendees were jailed by the end of April. At least 2,725 people were arrested for participating. According to internal government reports, the suppression was generally effective, although students were able to disrupt the May Day
ceremonies in Wrocław later in the year.
on 10 June 1967 following the Six Day War, and quickly rebuilt the Arab forces. Leonid Brezhnev
demanded condemnation of Israel from Gomułka at their joint meeting in Moscow. After his return to Warsaw, on June 19, 1967 Gomułka proclaimed at the Trade Union Congress, that the Israel's aggression had been "met with applause in Zionist circles of Jews – Polish citizens." His new "anti-Zionist" campaign was taken over by General Moczar from MSW (ethnic Ruthenian, b. Nikola Demko). The communist party appointed Tadeusz Walichnowski, an "anti-Zionist expert," the head of the minorities branch of the government, and by moving that department from social services to counter-intelligence. In the words of Polish scholar Włodzimierz Rozenbaum, the Six Day War: "provided Gomułka with an opportunity 'to kill several birds with one stone': he could use an "anti-Zionist" policy to undercut the appeal of the liberal wing of the PUWP; he could bring forward the Jewish issue to weaken the support for the nationalist faction and make his own position even stronger..." while securing political prospects for his own supporters.
The government-sponsored campaign of anti-Israel and anti-Zionist propaganda maintained – after the Prime Minister's speech – that there is a risk of "a fifth column to emerge in our country" thus suggesting that the "hidden Zionists" should relocate to Israel. The Communist party began a process of purging Jewish officials, primarily the moral supporters of the liberal opposition movement. Many Poles (irrespective of actual faith) were accused of being Zionists and expelled from the party.
In order to stir the attention of general public away from the Student movement and calls for social reform, which had a liberal background and was centred around freedom of speech for intellectuals and artists, the communist party came up with the idea of Nazi provenance. A leader of a hardline Stalinist faction within the Communist Party, Mieczysław Moczar, blamed the student protests on "Zionists" and used this affair as a pretext to launch a larger anti-Semitic campaign (although the expression "anti-Zionist" was officially used) to target Jews. In fact, despite the participation of a mix of Christian and Jewish Polish student activists in the protests, the relation of the protesting to Zionism
was mixed if not negative. The national strike call from Warsaw opposed both anti-Semitism and Zionism. A banner hung at a Rzeszow high school on April 27 read: "We hail our Zionist comrades."
of YIVO
Institute wrote: "The Interior Ministry compiled a card index of all Polish citizens of Jewish origin, even those who had been detached from organized Jewish life for generations. Jews were removed from jobs in public service, including from teaching positions in schools and universities. Pressure was placed upon them to leave the country by bureaucratic actions aimed at undermining their sources of livelihood and sometimes even by physical brutality." "The term 'anti-Zionist campaign' is misleading in two ways, since the campaign – wrote Dariusz Stola of the Polish Academy of Sciences – began as an anti-Israeli policy but quickly turned into an anti-Jewish campaign, and this evident anti-Jewish character remained its distinctive feature". The propaganda equated Jewish origins with Zionist sympathies and thus disloyalty to Poland. Anti-Semitic slogans were used in rallies. Prominent Jews: academics, managers, journalists lost their jobs. "In each case – wrote Institute of National Remembrance
– the decision of dismissal was proceeded by party’s resolution about expelling from the party".
Most Polish Jews who claimed their official status at the end of World War II, including Holocaust survivors who registered at CKŻP in 1945, had emigrated from Stalinist Poland already in her first years of existence. Of the fewer than 80,000 Jews who remained, many had political reasons for doing so. Consequently – as noted by historian Michael C. Steinlauf
– "their group profile ever more closely resembled the mythic Żydokomuna
." Many Jews held positions of repressive authority under the new administration. In March 1968 they became the center of an organized campaign to equate Jewish origins with Stalinist sympathies. The political purges affected all Polish Jews regardless of background, even though they were being ostensibly directed at those who had held office during the Stalinist era marked by gross abuse of power and human rights law violations. Over a thousand former hardline Stalinists left Poland in 1968, among them ex prosecutor Helena Wolińska-Brus
and Stalinist judge Stefan Michnik
. The Polish State Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (Institute of National Remembrance
, IPN) had investigated Stalinist crimes committed by some of the March 1968 emigrants including Michnik who settled in Sweden, and Wolińska-Brus residing in the United Kingdom. Both were accused of being an "accessory to a court murder" which is punishable by up to ten years in prison, as defined by the Article 2.1 of the Journal of Laws
of the Republic of Poland issued 18 December 1998. As soon as Poland joined the European Union, applications were made for their extradition based on European Arrest Warrant
s (EAW). However, Polish requests were refused on humanitarian grounds under the statute of limitations.
Between 1961 and 1967 the average rate of Jewish emigration from Poland was 500–900 persons per year. In 1968 the total of 3,900 Jews submitted their applications for leaving the country. A year later, between January and August of 1969, the number of emigrating Jews was almost 7,300 according to records of the Ministry of Interior Affairs.
One of the reactions of the communist government of Poland to the protests, was a greater support for demonstrations of Polish national feelings. Another consequence was the alienation of the regime from the leftist intelligentsia, who were disgusted at the official promotion of anti-Semitism. Many Polish intellectuals opposed the campaign, many openly. Another effect was the founding by Polish Emigrants to the West of organizations that encouraged opposition within Poland.
Inside Poland the alienation of the leftist intelligentsia had a long afterlife, and eventually contributed to the downfall of the PZPR dictatorship. Jacek Kuroń
, twice a PZPR member and imprisoned for his role in the events, in particular, became a highly effective adviser of the independent workers' movement in Poland. More generally the events - preceded by those in 1956 and followed by 1970, 1976 and then 1980, showed that Poland, with its strong nationalist traditions and a civil society, especially the Church, that had never been fully repressed, was the weakest element in the Eastern Bloc.
The anti-Semitic campaign damaged Poland's reputation abroad, particularly in the United States. Despite worldwide condemnation of the March 1968 events, for many years the Communist government did not admit the anti-Semitic nature of the anti-Zionist campaign, though some newspapers were allowed to publish critical articles. Finally, in 1988, the Polish Communist government officially acknowledged that the events were anti-Semitic, although they avoided taking full responsibility, calling them "political mistakes". After the fall of the Communist government, the Sejm
issued an official condemnation of the anti-Semitism of the March 1968 events in 1998. In 2000, President Aleksander Kwaśniewski
gave his own apology for the event in front of a group of Jewish students "as the president of Poland and as a Pole."
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
as March 1968 or March events pertains to the major student
Student
A student is a learner, or someone who attends an educational institution. In some nations, the English term is reserved for those who attend university, while a schoolchild under the age of eighteen is called a pupil in English...
and intellectual protest
Protest
A protest is an expression of objection, by words or by actions, to particular events, policies or situations. Protests can take many different forms, from individual statements to mass demonstrations...
action
Direct action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
against the communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
government of the People's Republic of Poland
People's Republic of Poland
The People's Republic of Poland was the official name of Poland from 1952 to 1990. Although the Soviet Union took control of the country immediately after the liberation from Nazi Germany in 1944, the name of the state was not changed until eight years later...
. The crisis resulted in the suppression of student strikes by security forces in all major academic centres across the country and the subsequent repression of the Polish dissident movement, as well as a mass emigration following the "anti-Zionist
Anti-Zionism
Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionistic views or opposition to the state of Israel. The term is used to describe various religious, moral and political points of view in opposition to these, but their diversity of motivation and expression is sufficiently different that "anti-Zionism" cannot be...
" campaign waged by General Secretary Władysław Gomułka. The protests coincided with the events of Prague spring
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...
in neighboring Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
– raising new hopes of democratic reforms among the intelligentsia – and culminated in the Warsaw Pact
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance , or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe...
invasion of Czechoslovakia on 20 August 1968.
The government's anti-Jewish campaign began already in 1967. It was a well-orchestrated response to the Soviet withdrawal of all diplomatic relations with Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
after the Six Day War – with factory workers across Poland forced to publicly denounce Zionism. The subsequent purges within the communist party, led by Interior Minister Mieczysław Moczar (b. Nikola Demko) and his faction, failed to topple Gomułka's government, but resulted in an actual expulsion from Poland of thousands of individuals of Jewish ancestry, including professionals, party officials and the secret police functionaries blamed "for a major part, if not all, of the crimes and horrors of the Stalinist period." Before the end of 1971, 12,927 Poles of Jewish origin emigrated. On the 30th anniversary of their departures a memorial plaque was placed at Warszawa Gdańska train station, from which most of exiled people took a train to Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
.
Protest in 1968 Europe
Political turmoil of the late 1960s – exemplified in the West by increasingly violent protests against the Vietnam warVietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
– were reflected in the East
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
by the events of the Prague spring
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...
which began on 5 January 1968. A growing wave of protests in Czechoslovakia marked the highpoint of a broader series of dissident social mobilization. The protests of the workers within the communist framework seemed to recall the 1956 protests in Poland. Numerous events of protest and revolt, especially among students reverberated across the continent in 1968, but many followed rather than preceded the Polish crisis.
A growing crisis in Communist Party control over universities, the literary community and intellectuals more generally marked the mid-1960s. Among those persecuted for their political activism on campus were Jacek Kuron
Jacek Kuron
Jacek Jan Kuroń was one of the democratic leaders of opposition in the People's Republic of Poland. Kuroń was a prominent Polish social and political figure; educator and historian; an activist of the Polish Scouting Association; co-founder of the Workers' Defence Committee; twice a Minister of...
and Adam Michnik
Adam Michnik
Adam Michnik is the editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, where he sometimes writes under the pen-names of Andrzej Zagozda or Andrzej Jagodziński. In 1966–1989 he was one of the leading organizers of the illegal, democratic opposition in Poland...
.
Polish student and intellectual protest
In January, the communist government banned the performance of a play by Adam MickiewiczAdam Mickiewicz
Adam Bernard Mickiewicz ) was a Polish poet, publisher and political writer of the Romantic period. One of the primary representatives of the Polish Romanticism era, a national poet of Poland, he is seen as one of Poland's Three Bards and the greatest poet in all of Polish literature...
, (Dziady
Dziady (poem)
Dziady is a poetic drama by the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz. It is considered one of the great works of European Romanticism. To George Sand and George Brandes, Dziady was a supreme realization of Romantic drama theory, to be ranked with such works as Goethe's Faust and Byron's Manfred.The...
, written in 1824), directed by Kazimierz Dejmek
Kazimierz Dejmek
Kazimierz Dejmek was a Polish actor, theatre and film director, and politician. During his career he managed the Teatr Nowy in Łódź , the National Theatre, Warsaw, and the Teatr Polski, Warsaw. From 1993 to 1996 he served as Poland's Minister of Culture...
at the Polish Theatre in Warsaw
Polish Theatre in Warsaw
Polish Theatre in Warsaw The theatre was initiated by Arnold Szyfman and designed by Czesław Przybylski. Finished in 1913, the facility featured Poland's first revolving stage. It a private enterprise staging Polish and foreign classics, contemporary drama, as well as popular plays.The theater was ...
, on the grounds that it contained Russophobic and "anti-socialist" references. The play had been performed 14 times, the last time on January 30. Dejmek was expelled from the Communist Party and later fired from the National Theatre. – He returned to his job in Warsaw as an artistic director only 5 years later.
The Warsaw Writers' Union condemned the ban on March 2, followed by the Actors' Union. A crowd of some 1,500 students protesting at Warsaw University on March 8 was met by attacks by the riot police. Within four days, protests spread to Kraków
Kraków
Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...
, Lublin
Lublin
Lublin is the ninth largest city in Poland. It is the capital of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 350,392 . Lublin is also the largest Polish city east of the Vistula river...
, Gliwice
Gliwice
Gliwice is a city in Upper Silesia in southern Poland, near Katowice. Gliwice is the west district of the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union – a metropolis with a population of 2 million...
, Wrocław, Gdańsk
Gdansk
Gdańsk is a Polish city on the Baltic coast, at the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area.The city lies on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay , in a conurbation with the city of Gdynia, spa town of Sopot, and suburban communities, which together form a metropolitan area called the...
, Poznań
Poznan
Poznań is a city on the Warta river in west-central Poland, with a population of 556,022 in June 2009. It is among the oldest cities in Poland, and was one of the most important centres in the early Polish state, whose first rulers were buried at Poznań's cathedral. It is sometimes claimed to be...
, and Łódź. Bands of Communist party "worker-squads" attacked the students, followed by police in Warsaw and Lublin. Mass student strikes took place in Wrocław on March 14–16, Kraków on March 14–20, and Opole. A call for a general strike
General strike
A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...
was issued from Warsaw on March 13. A hardline speech by Władysław Gomułka on March 19 cut off the possibility of negotiation. Further student protests, strikes and occupations
Occupation (protest)
An as an act of protest, is the entry into and holding of a building, space or symbolic site. As such, occupations often combine some of the following elements: a challenge to ownership of the space involved, an effort to gain public attention, the practical use of the facilities occupied, and a...
were met with the mass expulsion of thousands of participants. National coordination by the students was attempted through a March 25 meeting in Wrocław; most of its attendees were jailed by the end of April. At least 2,725 people were arrested for participating. According to internal government reports, the suppression was generally effective, although students were able to disrupt the May Day
May Day
May Day on May 1 is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures....
ceremonies in Wrocław later in the year.
Political purges
The Soviet Union withdrew all diplomatic relations with IsraelIsrael
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
on 10 June 1967 following the Six Day War, and quickly rebuilt the Arab forces. Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...
demanded condemnation of Israel from Gomułka at their joint meeting in Moscow. After his return to Warsaw, on June 19, 1967 Gomułka proclaimed at the Trade Union Congress, that the Israel's aggression had been "met with applause in Zionist circles of Jews – Polish citizens." His new "anti-Zionist" campaign was taken over by General Moczar from MSW (ethnic Ruthenian, b. Nikola Demko). The communist party appointed Tadeusz Walichnowski, an "anti-Zionist expert," the head of the minorities branch of the government, and by moving that department from social services to counter-intelligence. In the words of Polish scholar Włodzimierz Rozenbaum, the Six Day War: "provided Gomułka with an opportunity 'to kill several birds with one stone': he could use an "anti-Zionist" policy to undercut the appeal of the liberal wing of the PUWP; he could bring forward the Jewish issue to weaken the support for the nationalist faction and make his own position even stronger..." while securing political prospects for his own supporters.
The government-sponsored campaign of anti-Israel and anti-Zionist propaganda maintained – after the Prime Minister's speech – that there is a risk of "a fifth column to emerge in our country" thus suggesting that the "hidden Zionists" should relocate to Israel. The Communist party began a process of purging Jewish officials, primarily the moral supporters of the liberal opposition movement. Many Poles (irrespective of actual faith) were accused of being Zionists and expelled from the party.
In order to stir the attention of general public away from the Student movement and calls for social reform, which had a liberal background and was centred around freedom of speech for intellectuals and artists, the communist party came up with the idea of Nazi provenance. A leader of a hardline Stalinist faction within the Communist Party, Mieczysław Moczar, blamed the student protests on "Zionists" and used this affair as a pretext to launch a larger anti-Semitic campaign (although the expression "anti-Zionist" was officially used) to target Jews. In fact, despite the participation of a mix of Christian and Jewish Polish student activists in the protests, the relation of the protesting to Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
was mixed if not negative. The national strike call from Warsaw opposed both anti-Semitism and Zionism. A banner hung at a Rzeszow high school on April 27 read: "We hail our Zionist comrades."
Emigration of Polish citizens of Jewish origin
The communist government, faced by massive anti-Soviet sentiment among the Polish people, used hate propaganda to divide the nation. Historian David EngelDavid Engel
David Engel is an American historian and Professor of Holocaust and Judaic Studies at New York University. Dr. Engel holds a Ph.D...
of YIVO
YIVO
YIVO, , established in 1925 in Wilno, Poland as the Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut , or Yiddish Scientific Institute, is a source for orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to the Yiddish language...
Institute wrote: "The Interior Ministry compiled a card index of all Polish citizens of Jewish origin, even those who had been detached from organized Jewish life for generations. Jews were removed from jobs in public service, including from teaching positions in schools and universities. Pressure was placed upon them to leave the country by bureaucratic actions aimed at undermining their sources of livelihood and sometimes even by physical brutality." "The term 'anti-Zionist campaign' is misleading in two ways, since the campaign – wrote Dariusz Stola of the Polish Academy of Sciences – began as an anti-Israeli policy but quickly turned into an anti-Jewish campaign, and this evident anti-Jewish character remained its distinctive feature". The propaganda equated Jewish origins with Zionist sympathies and thus disloyalty to Poland. Anti-Semitic slogans were used in rallies. Prominent Jews: academics, managers, journalists lost their jobs. "In each case – wrote Institute of National Remembrance
Institute of National Remembrance
Institute of National Remembrance — Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation is a Polish government-affiliated research institute with lustration prerogatives and prosecution powers founded by specific legislation. It specialises in the legal and historical sciences and...
– the decision of dismissal was proceeded by party’s resolution about expelling from the party".
Most Polish Jews who claimed their official status at the end of World War II, including Holocaust survivors who registered at CKŻP in 1945, had emigrated from Stalinist Poland already in her first years of existence. Of the fewer than 80,000 Jews who remained, many had political reasons for doing so. Consequently – as noted by historian Michael C. Steinlauf
Michael C. Steinlauf
Michael C. Steinlauf is an Associate Professor of History at Gratz College, Pennsylvania. Steinlauf teaches Jewish history and culture in Eastern Europe and Polish-Jewish relations. He is the author and editor focused on studies of Jewish popular culture in Poland. His work has been translated into...
– "their group profile ever more closely resembled the mythic Żydokomuna
Zydokomuna
Żydokomuna is a pejorative antisemitic stereotype which came into use between World Wars I and II, blaming Jews for the rise of communism in Poland, where communism was identified as part of a wider Jewish-led conspiracy to seize power....
." Many Jews held positions of repressive authority under the new administration. In March 1968 they became the center of an organized campaign to equate Jewish origins with Stalinist sympathies. The political purges affected all Polish Jews regardless of background, even though they were being ostensibly directed at those who had held office during the Stalinist era marked by gross abuse of power and human rights law violations. Over a thousand former hardline Stalinists left Poland in 1968, among them ex prosecutor Helena Wolińska-Brus
Helena Wolinska-Brus
Lt. Col. Helena Wolińska-Brus born Fajga Mindla Danielak, was a military prosecutor in Poland with the rank of lieutenant-colonel , involved in Stalinist regime show trials of the 1950s. She has been implicated in the arrest and execution of many Polish anti-Nazi resistance fighters including key...
and Stalinist judge Stefan Michnik
Stefan Michnik
First Lieutenant Stefan Michnik born 28 September 1929 in Drohobycz was a Stalinist judge in postwar Poland, implicated in the arrest, internment and execution of Polish resistance fighters including Major Jerzy Lewandowski, Major Zefiryn Machalla, Colonel Maksymilian Chojecki and others....
. The Polish State Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (Institute of National Remembrance
Institute of National Remembrance
Institute of National Remembrance — Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation is a Polish government-affiliated research institute with lustration prerogatives and prosecution powers founded by specific legislation. It specialises in the legal and historical sciences and...
, IPN) had investigated Stalinist crimes committed by some of the March 1968 emigrants including Michnik who settled in Sweden, and Wolińska-Brus residing in the United Kingdom. Both were accused of being an "accessory to a court murder" which is punishable by up to ten years in prison, as defined by the Article 2.1 of the Journal of Laws
Dziennik Ustaw
Dziennik Ustaw or Dziennik Ustaw Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej is the most important Polish publication of legal acts. It is the only official source of law for promulgation of Polish laws. The publication of this journal is solely the responsibility of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland...
of the Republic of Poland issued 18 December 1998. As soon as Poland joined the European Union, applications were made for their extradition based on European Arrest Warrant
European Arrest Warrant
The European Arrest Warrant is an arrest warrant valid throughout all member states of the European Union . Once issued by a member state, it requires the receiving member state to arrest and transfer a criminal suspect or sentenced person to the issuing state so that the person can be put on...
s (EAW). However, Polish requests were refused on humanitarian grounds under the statute of limitations.
Between 1961 and 1967 the average rate of Jewish emigration from Poland was 500–900 persons per year. In 1968 the total of 3,900 Jews submitted their applications for leaving the country. A year later, between January and August of 1969, the number of emigrating Jews was almost 7,300 according to records of the Ministry of Interior Affairs.
Aftermath
Inside Poland the alienation of the leftist intelligentsia had a long afterlife, and eventually contributed to the downfall of the PZPR dictatorship. Jacek Kuroń
Jacek Kuron
Jacek Jan Kuroń was one of the democratic leaders of opposition in the People's Republic of Poland. Kuroń was a prominent Polish social and political figure; educator and historian; an activist of the Polish Scouting Association; co-founder of the Workers' Defence Committee; twice a Minister of...
, twice a PZPR member and imprisoned for his role in the events, in particular, became a highly effective adviser of the independent workers' movement in Poland. More generally the events - preceded by those in 1956 and followed by 1970, 1976 and then 1980, showed that Poland, with its strong nationalist traditions and a civil society, especially the Church, that had never been fully repressed, was the weakest element in the Eastern Bloc.
The anti-Semitic campaign damaged Poland's reputation abroad, particularly in the United States. Despite worldwide condemnation of the March 1968 events, for many years the Communist government did not admit the anti-Semitic nature of the anti-Zionist campaign, though some newspapers were allowed to publish critical articles. Finally, in 1988, the Polish Communist government officially acknowledged that the events were anti-Semitic, although they avoided taking full responsibility, calling them "political mistakes". After the fall of the Communist government, the Sejm
Sejm
The Sejm is the lower house of the Polish parliament. The Sejm is made up of 460 deputies, or Poseł in Polish . It is elected by universal ballot and is presided over by a speaker called the Marshal of the Sejm ....
issued an official condemnation of the anti-Semitism of the March 1968 events in 1998. In 2000, President Aleksander Kwaśniewski
Aleksander Kwasniewski
Aleksander Kwaśniewski is a Polish politician who served as the President of Poland from 1995 to 2005. He was born in Białogard, and during communist rule he was active in the Socialist Union of Polish Students and was the Minister for Sport in the communist government in the 1980s...
gave his own apology for the event in front of a group of Jewish students "as the president of Poland and as a Pole."
See also
- Prague Trials
- Doctors' plotDoctors' plotThe Doctors' plot was the most dramatic anti-Jewish episode in the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin's regime, involving the "unmasking" of a group of prominent Moscow doctors, predominantly Jews, as conspiratorial assassins of Soviet leaders...
- History of the Jews in PolandHistory of the Jews in PolandThe history of the Jews in Poland dates back over a millennium. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world. Poland was the centre of Jewish culture thanks to a long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy. This ended with the...
- Protests of 1968Protests of 1968The protests of 1968 consisted of a worldwide series of protests, largely participated in by students and workers.-Background:Background speculations of overall causality vary about the political protests centering on the year 1968. Some argue that protests could be attributed to the social changes...
- Artur EisenbachArtur EisenbachArtur Eisenbach was a Polish-Jewish historian, an expert on the history of Jews in Poland and the head of the Jewish Historical Institute between 1966 and 1968....