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1

Armia słowacka we wschodniej Polsce w 1941 roku

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Lacko M., Grabiński T.

Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość

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2003

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issue 1(3)

217-234

2

Masakra katyńska a Słowacja. Obraz tragedii w prasie słowackiej wiosną 1943 roku

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Lacko M., Grabiński T.

Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość

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2005

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issue 2(8)

217-236

EN

The tragedy of Katyn had repercussions not only in Poland but also in other European countries. One of them was Slovakia which at the time of war was an independent country of Hitler’s “New Europe.” The situation of this country was very specific. As a German ally it was under its constant control, but culture and tradition bound it to the Slavic world, of which Russia had been considered the most important representative. After news about the massacre reached Slovak public opinion, an idealized notion of Russian politics was called into question. The media reported on the sensational discovery almost immediately – on the 14th of April 1943. However, since the first news was supplied only by German sources, it sounded suspicious and was believed to be a part of war propaganda. This attitude changed as soon as the results of analyses, carried out by a widely respected pathologist – Prof. Frantisek Subik, were published. Not only was he the only Slovak who witnessed the exhumations, but also a member of the international commission examining the gravesite. Soon after his return from the USSR he shared his impressions and gave a detailed account of his findings during a lecture he held on the 9th of May 1943. Almost all the important newspapers (“Slovak,” “Gardista,” “Slovenska Pravda,” “Slovenska Politika”) wrote about the lecture in a politically correct way. Nazi propaganda in Slovakia also exploited the facts fittingly.

3

Odkrycie masowych grobów w Katyniu oraz problematyka polska w prasie Protektoratu Czech i Moraw w okresie od kwietnia do czerwca 1943 roku

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Suk P., Grabiński T.

Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość

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2005

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issue 2(8)

237-255

EN

After the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was established, official press was directly subordinated to the Office of the Reich Protector, the head of which for a long time was Wolfgang Wolfram von Wolmar. During weekly briefings editors-in chief were told what information ought to be published and what kind of a comment on current political events was required. The author has studied all the Prague newspapers and some of the magazines which came out from mid-April till the end of June 1943. The Protectorate press mostly published official German documents, among which there was also information about the discovery of mass graves in Katyn, provided by the DNB on the 14th of April 1943. The report prepared by the pathologists and criminologists who worked there appeared in the beginning of May. The readers could read the testimony of a Polish writer Emil Skiwski and, above all, testimonies of two witnesses from the Protectorate, a pathologist Frantisek Hajek and an eminent writer Frantisek Kozik. Hajek as a member of the international group of physicians participated in the autopsy, Kozik visited Katyn together with other European writers. Their testimonies were published and, on the 30th of April, Kozik gave a speech on the radio. The press was occupied mainly with commentating on the relationship between the Polish emigrants in London and the Soviet government, who exploited the Katyn issue to put the London emigrants in the shade and rolled out the Moscow emigrants under Wanda Wasilewska’s leadership. The most involved commentator was Karel Werner, the redactor-in-chief of the “Poledni list” magazine and later the “Vecerni Ceske Slovo” daily paper. The editorial articles and commentaries differentiate as the employed figures of speech are considered. Journalists who worked in reputable newspapers, while reporting on the felony, did not use expressions like “an animal excess of the gangsters,” “Jewish torturers” or “the beast of Bolshevism.” Those phrases were employed by journalists who had worked as editorial staff for the tabloid press before 1938. The anti-Semitic articles were written mostly by editors who had previously worked for the “Vlajka” magazine – Pachmayer, Sourek and a keynoter, anti-Semite Rudolf Novak. Frequently given opinion (27 times) was that Bolshevism had not changed since 1917 and was still the same. Not so rare (21 times) were presumptions that Great Britain would betray the Poles because it is far more important for her to maintain the alliance with Moscow. A warning that Katyn is a lesson of what would happen to the Czechs under the Bolshevik rule was mentioned 17 times. And finally, it was stated 14 times that the German army on the Eastern front protected Europe from spreading of Bolshevism.

4

Akcja „Červotoč” (Kołatek) Tajny współpracownik StB Stanislav Dvořák jako kurier „Solidarności Polsko-Czechosłowackiej”

100%

Blažek P., Grabiński T.

Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość

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2006

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issue 1(9)

117-163

EN

Although the dissidents of the Soviet Bloc declared their mutual solidarity in a number of proclamations, their real personal contacts were at the minimum due to the limited occasions to travel. Relations of the leaders of the Charter 77 and the Workers’ Defence Committee “KOR” were a certain exception. They managed to organize famous meetings at the Czechoslovak-Polish border already in 1987. A remarkable systematic cooperation was set up in the late 80’s and many personal meetings took place at “the green border”, not only in Karkonosze but also in Tatry, Jeseniky or Beskidy. Only a few of these meetings had any political meaning – many famous personalities used to meet there, public proclamations were published and many photographs of the participants were taken at the border stones and marks. Most of the other meetings happened in purpose to smuggle various samizdat materials and to prepare cooperative pressure actions. To the main organizers belonged young Poles from Wrocław who had already kept the contacts with Prague Charter 77 signatories from the early 80’s. Nowadays it is possible for the first time to use a wider range of the State Security (StB) archive funds for historic research related to these events. Czechoslovak secret police made huge impacts into life of regime opponents – they checked their correspondence, bugged their phone calls and flats and made their everyday life very difficult by all kinds of “arrangements for disintegration”. For monitoring and regulation of dissidents’ activities they also used a number of secret collaborators who outwardly presented themselves as regime opponents. One of them was a Czech language tutor at the Wrocław and Katowice Universities Stanislav Dvorák who used to operate as a main “connection” of Wroclaw’s Polish-Czechoslovak Solidarity and Prague Charter 77 signatories in a first half of 80’s. For the first time he collaborated with the secret police in 1981–1984 as counterintelligence agent under a codename “Michal”, for the second time in 1989–1990 when as a ideal collaborator (“ideovy spolupracovník”) of StB he chose his codename “Jilemský”. The secret police by mean of him controlled and influenced the relations of Polish and Czech dissidents for several years. The real image of Stanislav Dvořák was fully disclosed to his friends from opposition first in 2003 when author of this study gained an access to both files of “Michal” and “Jilemský” kept by secret police in 80’s. The subject of these files together with memories of witnesses makes the major base of this study.

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Armia słowacka we wschodniej Polsce w 1941 roku

Masakra katyńska a Słowacja. Obraz tragedii w prasie słowackiej wiosną 1943 roku

Odkrycie masowych grobów w Katyniu oraz problematyka polska w prasie Protektoratu Czech i Moraw w okresie od kwietnia do czerwca 1943 roku

Akcja „Červotoč” (Kołatek) Tajny współpracownik StB Stanislav Dvořák jako kurier „Solidarności Polsko-Czechosłowackiej”