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JOZEF SWIATLO - MYTH AND REALITY

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Sobor-Swiderska A.

Studia Historyczne

2006

vol. 49

issue 1(193)

41-63

Józef Swiatlo's biography remains a web of muddle and mystery. He was a high-ranking official of the communist security apparatus from its earliest phase and co-founder of the 10th Department of the Ministry of Public Security, designed to collect information about party members. The article is divided into five sections. The first presents an outline of Swiatlo's career, focused on his collaboration with the secret services of the USSR and other East European countries in the fabrication of a great conspiracy within the communist parties and, within that scheme, on bis own involvement with the case Noel and Herman Field - secretly imprisoned in Hungary and in Poland respectively. The second part deals with the circumstances of Swiatlo's escape to the American sector of West Berlin in December 1953 and then, in September 1954, the disclosure of his defection followed by a series of broadcasts in the Polish Service of Radio Free Europe in which he spoke in person about the mechanisms and the abuses of the Stalinist system. The third part discusses the reactions to those broadcasts - the dismantling of the Ministry of Public Security and the push for reforms, which gradually loosened the grip of Stalinism. The fourth part looks at the reasons for his defection. The last part examines the reactions of the general public to Swiatlo's radio broadcasts. The author uses materials from the 'Archiwum Akt Nowych' and the Institute of National Memory as well as documents from Russian archives about Józef Swiatlo and the brothers Field.

SECURITY SERVICE SURVEILLANCE OF POLISH POLITICIANS OF JEWISH BACKGROUND PRIOR TO AND AFTER MARCH 1968

100%

Sobor-Swiderska A.

Studia Historyczne

2008

vol. 51

issue 2(202)

185-206

This article, based on data from the archives of the Communist security service (SB), presents the surveillance operations in the 1960s and 1970s, which targeted Jewish communists who had belonged to the political elite in the Stalinist years and as a result of the 1956 'thaw' either disappeared from mainstream politics or hung on to relatively inconspicuous posts. Of the reasons for dedicating that particular group to the special attention of the security apparatus none is as important as the demand for material that could be used to incriminate communists of Jewish background. The targeted persons were to have bugs installed in both home and workplace. Their telephone conversations were to be tapped and their letters read; their activities monitored by informers. The surveillance data was to demonstrate the bad character of the members of that group: it would show that they had no qualms about plotting against the official party line, or undermining the authority of the party, or getting involved in 'anti-socialist and Zionist activities'. Undercover operations against prominent communists of Jewish background started in late 1964, after Mieczyslaw Moczar became head of the Ministry of the Interior. They peaked in March 1968 and December 1970, in conjunction with the anti-semitic campaign of 1967-1968 and its aftermath, and were eventually called off in the early 1970s. It was then decided that a decade of investigations had produced no evidence of anti-party activity from that quarter and that the alleged culprits had got too old and obsolescent to have any impact on events.

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2 Studia Historyczne

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JOZEF SWIATLO - MYTH AND REALITY

SECURITY SERVICE SURVEILLANCE OF POLISH POLITICIANS OF JEWISH BACKGROUND PRIOR TO AND AFTER MARCH 1968