An Amazing Life

 Pre-war

Tadeusz Grygier was born in 1915 in Warsaw. As a boy, he read voraciously: psychiatry (mainly in German), belles lettres (mainly in French), poetry (in Polish), philosophy, psychology, law and justice. From 1932 to 1935, he studied political science, economics and law at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. Then he enrolled in law, psychology, philosophy and criminology at the University of Warsaw. He was admitted to the Bar in 1936 at the age of 21, becoming the youngest law graduate and “avocat stagiaire” in Poland.  His doctoral study in criminology and psychology at the University of Warsaw was interrupted by WWII.

During-war

In 1940, after the Hitler-Stalin pact, Grygier was deported by the Soviets to the “Gulag Archipelago.”  He landed in a slave labour camp in the Komi Republic, a harsh, sub-polar region just West of Siberia, whose population consisted almost solely of the prisoners and guards of the camps. He survived by re-defining himself not as a victim, but as a lucky scientist sent to a forbidden zone to observe and analyse the effects of oppression. While in the camp, starving and barely alive, he planned a PhD thesis and a book on oppression.

While in the camp, he was twice under the threat of death, accused of sabotage and of an attempt to kill Soviet citizens by spreading a typhus epidemic. His own defence, based on wide knowledge and psychological insight, saved him from execution, and gained him partial freedom to work as psychiatrist with an eminent neurologist in the General Hospital of Syktyvkar. He proposed a plan to reorganize mental health services in the Komi Republic. The plan was approved in Moscow and the Komi Minister of Health received a telegram that ended: “Tell Grygier that he will have his hospital”. At the end of June 1941, when the Germans attacked the USSR and Churchill declared himself on the side of the Russians, the plan to build a mental hospital among the labour camps became unrealistic. Instead, Grygier became a deep sea diving instructor of underwater sabotage.

In July 1941 Grygier sent a report on his activities and the much needed help for prisoners and inmates of the labour camps to the as yet non-existent Polish Ambassador in Moscow, in anticipation of resumption of diplomatic relations between the Polish government-in-exile and the Soviet government. Soon after the arrival of the real Ambassador he was appointed to represent his country in Komi. This proved to be unacceptable to the Soviet authorities. He was immediately apprehended by the Soviet secret police, tortured, deprived of sleep and food and, then, interrogated for 15 hours by the man known as The Terror of Siberia. The Terror used “classical conditioning,” which was originally developed by the Soviet Nobel Prize winner I.P. Pavlov. Pavlov’s method, which made dogs psychotic, was used on political prisoners. When Grygier realized what his interrogator was attempting to do, he prepared a counter-attack using the same method in the last 3-4 hours and lauched it when in Moscow was midnight and Stalin and his closest confederates were taking major decisions. Amazingly, this led to a hasty Morse cable to Moscow that resulted in the Soviet government granting him diplomatic privileges.

In his capacity as an independent representative of the Polish government-in-exile, he managed to establish friendly cooperation with the General Secretary of the Komi Communist Party which enabled him to create a network of regional representatives of the Polish deportees, a basic welfare system, health insurance, twice weekly radio broadcasts, transmitted by loudspeakers to all regions of Komi, including labour camps, Polish press and schools, and legal aid. He also negotiated that Polish lawyers were granted the unprecedented right to defend citizens of their country in Soviet Courts. He organized recruitment to the Polish Army and established a self-sustaining Polish factory that supplied, at a price, war material (made of local wicker) for the front (1941-42). After the Red Army’s successful defence of Moscow, Grygier was accused by the Soviets of spying for the Germans and had to be hastily evacuated, first to Kuybyshev, then to Iran.

While in Teheran (1943–44) he worked at the Polish Legation, but in fact for Polish, British and American intelligence.  Following a leak to Moscow of his top secret report to London, his operational work had to end and he was appointed by the Polish government-in-exile as Director of the Department of Special Studies (focused on the U.S.S.R) in London. Subsequently, he became a consultant for the Soviet Section, Research Division of the British Foreign Office.

Post-war

Between 1945 and 1950, Grygier undertook his PhD studies in psychology and criminology at the London School of Economics and wrote a thesis on Oppression that was later published as a book. Offered Rockefeller Fellowships twice, he studied and conducted research first at Cambridge (1946-48), then Harvard and the universities of Illinois, Chicago and California (1952-53).

On his return to England, he established a Department of Clinical Psychology and Research at Banstead Hospital near London, which involved post-graduate teaching to psychologists and psychiatrists as well as research in conjunction with other hospitals, the Home Office, Vickers Armstrong, the Admiralty, and the British Army Operational Research Group; it was largely concerned with the development of the Dynamic Personality Inventory, a personality test which he had constructed while in the United States.

In 1960, he was invited by the University of Toronto, where he taught and directed research in criminology, psychology and social work. He concurrently taught criminological policy and supervised psychological theses in French at the University of Montreal, commuting by night train. He also acted as director of research and policy advisor in the area of criminal justice for the Government of Ontario. On the international arena, he represented Canada at the United Nations congress in Stockholm in 1965 and later became a consultant on social defence for the U.N.O. offices in New York and Vienna. He also made study visits to Poland and several other European countries.

In 1967, Grygier moved to the University of Ottawa to set up what he called the first in the world department of applied criminology.  This was a realization of his longstanding dream. Since the age of 15 he believed that criminology was a discipline that contained “everything” and hoped to promote its development.  He remained Research Director at the Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa until his retirement and Professor Emeritus until his death.  He was also a member of a committee that established the Faculty of Administration at the University of Ottawa.

Upon his retirement in 1980, he became Advisor on Correctional Policy and Planning for the Government of Canada. In 1989, he was selected by the Ontario-Jiangsu Educational Exchange as a visiting professor in China.  He lectured at the Social Science Academy in Shanghai, the Law School of Suzhou University, the Law Department of Nanjing University and the East China Institute for Politics and Law in Shanghai and gave seminars for senior judges, lawyers, social scientists and administrators.

He lived on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River in a house named after his favourite philosopher of serenity, Epicurus, and continued to write and sail until the end of his life.