Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda (7 November 1891 – 15 March 1938), born Yenokh Gershevich Iyeguda in Rybinsk into a Jewish family was a secret police official who served as director of the NKVD, the Soviet Union's security and intelligence agency, from 1934 to 1936. Appointed by Joseph Stalin, Yagoda supervised the arrest, show trial, and execution of the Old Bolsheviks Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, climactic events of the Great Purge. Yagoda supervised the construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal with Naftaly Frenkel, using penal labor from the GULAG system, during which 12,000–25,000 laborers died. He commanded the forced collectivization and is one of the main responsible people for the great hunger in Ukraine, responsible for the deaths of up to 10 million people and the deportation of 5 million Russian and Ukrainian peasants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genrikh_Yagoda

Józef Światło

Józef Światło, born Izaak Fleischfarb (1 January 1915 – 2 September 1994), was a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Public Security of Poland (MBP) who served as deputy director of the 10th Department run by Anatol Fejgin. Known for supervising the torture of prisoners, he was nicknamed "the Butcher" by MBP prisoners.

After the 1953 death of Joseph Stalin and arrest of Lavrentiy Beria, Światło traveled to East Germany on official business. While on the Berlin subway with Fejgin, passing through West Berlin, on 5 December 1953 he "slipped away" and defected to the West.

Adam Humer

Adam Teofil Humer born either 1917 or 1908, in Camden, USA into a Jewish peasant family - died November 2001 in Warsaw ) was a high-ranking official of the notorious Ministry of Public Security of Poland (deputy director of Investigations Bureau). Known for particular brutality and barbarity, Humer tortured political prisoners whom he interrogated during the 1940s and 1950s. Arrested in 1994, in March 1996 Humer and 11 other functionaries of the UB were convicted as Poland's first post-independence Stalinist criminals for their role in the routine torture and execution of members of the Polish Democratic Underground during the Stalinist era. Sentenced to nine years in prison, he died during a break in sentence.

Salomon Morel

Salomon Morel (November 15, 1919 – February 14, 2007) was a Jewish partisan, Stalinist official and an accused war criminal. Immediately after the end of World War II, he became commander of the Zgoda labour camp in Świętochłowice. During the rise of the Polish United Workers' Party, Morel acquired the rank of colonel in the political police, or MBP, and commanded a prison in Katowice.

In 1994, soon after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Morel was investigated by Poland's Institute of National Remembrance for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the "revenge killings" of 1,500 ethnic prisoners from Upper Silesia (most of them Polish Silesians and German civilians). After his case was publicized by the Polish, German, British, and American media, Morel fled to Israel and was granted citizenship under the Law of Return. Poland twice requested his extradition, once in 1998 and once in 2005, but Israel refused to comply and rejected the more serious charges as being false and again rejected extradition on the grounds that the statute of limitations against Morel had run out, and that Morel was in poor health.

Salomon Morel was born on November 15, 1919 in the village of Garbów near Lublin, Poland, the son of a Jewish baker.

Zgoda labour camp

Main article: Zgoda labour camp

On March 15, 1945, Morel became commander of the infamous Zgoda camp in Świętochłowice. The Zgoda camp was set up by the Soviet political police, or NKVD, after the Soviet Army entered southern Poland. In February 1945 the camp was handed over to the Communist Polish secret service, the notorious Urząd Bezpieczeństwa. Most prisoners in the camp were Silesians and German citizens, while a small number were from "central Poland", and about 38 foreigners.

Sometimes children were sent to the camp along with parents. Prisoners were not accused of any crime, but were sent by decision of Security Authorities. Authorities tried to convince society that prisoners were only ethnic Germans and former Nazi war criminals and collaborators. It is estimated that close to 2,000 inmates died in the camp where torture and abuse of prisoners were chronic and rampant. The camp was closed in November 1945.

Extradition controversy

In 1998, Poland requested that Morel be extradited for trial, but Israel refused. A reply sent to the Polish Justice Ministry from the Israeli government said that Israel would not extradite Mr. Morel as the statute of limitations had expired on war crimes.

In April 2004, Poland filed another extradition request against Morel, this time with fresh evidence, upgrading the case to "communist crimes against the population." The main charge against Salomon Morel was that, as commandant of the Zgoda camp at Świętochłowice, he created for the prisoners in this camp, out of ethnic and political considerations, conditions that jeopardised their lives, including starvation and torture.The charges against Morel were based primarily on the evidence of over 100 witnesses, including 58 former inmates of the Zgoda camp. In July 2005 this request was again formally refused by the Israeli government. The response rejected the more serious charges as being false, potentially part of an antisemitic conspiracy, and again rejected extradition on the grounds that the statute of limitations against Morel had run out, and that Morel was in poor health. Ewa Koj, a prosecutor with the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, criticized the decision. “There should be one measure for judging war criminals, whether they are German, Israeli or of any other nationality,” Koj said, but the Polish Foreign Ministry decided not to press the matter further. Morel died in Tel Aviv on February 14, 2007.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salomon_Morel

Stefan Michnik

Stefan Michnik - born 28 September 1929 in Drohobycz (Second Polish Republic, now Drohobych, Ukraine), He worked as a judge in postwar Poland and has been implicated in the arrest, internment and execution of a number of Polish resistance fighters. Accused of communist crimes. He lives in Sweden.

Stefan Michnik was the son of Helena Michnik and Samuel Rosenbusch nicknamed "Emil" or "Miłek" (born around 1904). His mother was a Polish-Jewish teacher in Drogobych and an activist for the Communist Party of Western Ukraine , the Communist Party of Poland, and the Stalinist Union of Polish Patriots. His father was a Jewish lawyer and communist activist, executed around 1937 in the Soviet Union during the Great Purge.

Michnik's half-brother (on his mother's side) is Adam Michnik, editor-in-chief of the Polish newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza.

Judicial career

Michnik became a judge in postwar Poland after completing an 8-month course for military judges in Jelenia Góra.He was first recruited by the Information Bureau under the pseudonym Kazimierczak but fired 11 months later, and was given severance pay of 1,000 zloty. At the beginning of 1951 Michnik was assigned a position with the Regional Military Court (Wojskowy Sąd Rejonowy, WSR) in Warsaw and two weeks later imposed his first sentence against Stanisław Bronarski, charged with membership in the AK, NSZ and NZW. Bronarski (exonerated in post-communist Poland) was given 5 consecutive death sentences and executed on 18 January 1951 at the Mokotów Prison. Michnik took part in the Trial of the Generals, dubbed a judicial murder by historians, with 40 death sentences pronounced in the fall of 1951, half of them carried out (see list of the 21 executed officers by name, with Stefan Michnik as one of the sentencing judges).After the collapse of communism he was formally implicated by Poland in the arrest, internment and staged execution of a number of Polish resistance fighters charged with anti-communist activities. Most of them were officers of the Polish Army who fought against Nazi Germany in World War II.

The list of Polish Army officers sentenced personally by Michnik, and rehabilitated without exception (also posthumously) included:

1. Major Zefiryn Machalla - death sentence given by Michnik, the jury took a joint decision not to allow defense in the proceedings; Machalla's family was not informed about the execution,
2. Colonel Maksymilian Chojecki - death sentence, not executed,
3. Major Andrzej Rudolf Czaykowski - death sentence, Michnik participated personally in his execution,
4. Major Jerzy Lewandowski - death sentence, not executed,
5. Colonel Stanisław Wecki - lecturer at the Academy of the General Staff, sentenced to 13 years in prison, died as a result of torture,
6. Major Zenon Tarasiewicz, case Sr 12/52, 12 years
7. Colonel Romuald Sidorski - editor in Chief of the Quartermaster Review, sentenced to 12 years in prison, died because of lack of medical assistance,
8. Lieutenant Colonel Aleksander Kowalski,
9. Major Karol Sęk - artilleryman from Radom, officer of the National Armed Forces, death sentence, executed in 1952.

Michnik left Poland for Sweden (he was denied a US visa) during the 1968 Polish political crisis. He lived as a retired librarian in a small town of Storvreta near Uppsala. He is currently in a nursing home in Gothenburg.

He was a contributor to Culture, Polish-émigré literary-political magazine, for which he wrote articles both as Karol Szwedowicz and under his own name.

Since August 2007 the Polish Institute of National Remembrance deliberated on a motion to request his extradition. On 25 February 2010, the Military Garrison Court in Warsaw at the request of the investigation division of the IPN issued an official arrest warrant for Stefan Michnik.In October 2010, Polish prosecutors issued a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) on the same basis. On 18 November 2010, the court in Uppsala refused to extradite Stefan Michnik back to Poland explaining that his alleged criminal acts (see communist crime) committed in Poland fall outside the statute of limitations in Sweden.

Julia Brystiger

Julia Brystiger (née Prajs, born November 25, 1902, in Stryj – died November 9, 1975, in Warsaw) was a Polish Communist activist and member of the security apparatus in Stalinist Poland.^[1] She was also known as Julia Brystygier, Bristiger, Brustiger, Briestiger, Brystygierowa, Bristigierowa, and by her nicknames – given by the victims of torture: Luna, Bloody Luna, Daria, Ksenia, and Maria. The nickname Bloody Luna was a direct reference of her Gestapo-like methods during interrogations. Her pen name was Julia Preiss.^[2] Author of several books.

Brystiger was the daughter of a Jewish pharmacist from Stryj (now Ukraine).

Since 1927, she was an active participant in the communist movement, and in 1929 was fired because of her communist agitation. Working for the Communist Party of Poland, she was arrested several times, and in 1937 was sentenced to 2 years in prison.^[2]

After the Nazi and Soviet attack on Poland, Brystiger escaped to Samarkand, accepted Soviet citizenship and became an active member of the Soviet political administration. She created the so-called Committee of Political Prisoners, which helped the NKVD to imprison several members of the prewar Polish opposition movements. She was "denouncing people on such scale, that she antagonized even Communist party members". Ironically, at one point Brystiger oversaw the interrogation and persecution of Bela and Józef Goldberg – her future colleague, the UB interrogator known as Józef Różański. Różańskis had committed "a crime" of accepting Western food-aid in the form of two kilograms of rice and a bag of flour from the Polish Government in Exile's embassy, in order to save their daughter from starvation. A few years later, Józef Różański joined the NKVD and eventually, became a high ranking functionary in the Polish secret police. He ended up working alongside Brystiger – his former interrogator – in the Ministry of Public Security of Poland under Stalinism.

Following German Operation Barbarossa Brystiger fled to Kharkov, then to Samarkand deep in the USSR. In 1943-44, she worked for the Union of Polish Patriots, and in October 1944, joined the new Polish Workers' Party. In December 1944, after returning behind the Soviet front, Brystygier began working for the infamous Ministry of Public Security of Poland, where she soon got promoted to the rank of Director of the Fifth Department created in July 1946 specifically for the purpose of persecution and torture of Polish religious personalities. Her career is believed to have been so rapid also because she was intimate with such high functionaries as Jakub Berman and Hilary Minc.^[4] In the Polish official archives, there is an instruction written by Brystygier to her subordinates, about the purpose of torture:

In fact, the Polish intelligentsia as such is against the Communist system and basically, it is impossible to re-educate it. All that remains is to liquidate it. However, since we must not repeat the mistake of the Russians after the 1917 revolution, when all intelligentsia members were exterminated, and the country did not develop correctly afterwards, we have to create such a system of terror and pressure that the members of the intelligentsia would not dare to be politically active.

Brystiger personally oversaw the first stages of each UB investigation at her place of employment. She would torture the captured persons using her own methods such as whipping male victims' genitals. One of her victims was a man named Szafarzynski – from the Olsztyn office of the Polish People's Party – who died as a result of interrogation carried out by Brystygier. One of the victims of her interrogation methods testified later: "She is a murderous monster, worse than German female guards of the concentration camps". Anna Roszkiewicz–Litwiniwiczowa, a former soldier of the Home Army, said about Brystygier: "She was famous for her sadistic tortures; she seemed to have been obsessed with sadistic treatment of genitalia and was fulfilling her libido in that way.".

Brystiger became the head of the 5th Department of MBP sometime in the late 1940s. It specialized in the persecution of Polish religious leaders. Brystygier – a dogmatic Marxist – yearned to destroy all religion as an "opiate of the masses". She directed the operation to arrest and detain the Primate of Poland, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski. The decision to arrest him had been made earlier in Moscow. Brystygier took an active part in the "war against religion" in the 1950s, in which only in 1950 (in one year), 123 Roman Catholic priests were imprisoned.

She also persecuted other congregations, such as the 2,000 jailed Jehovah's Witnesses. Julia Brystygier left the Ministry of Public Security in 1956 and tried to become a writer, authoring a novel "Crooked Letters". She worked in a publishing house under Jewish communist Jerzy Borejsza (Różański's brother), and was a frequent visitor in a boarding school for vision impaired, in a village near Warsaw.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Brystiger

Helena Wolińska-Brus

Wolińska-Brus was born to a Jewish family in Warsaw, where she later married Włodzimierz Brus (born Beniamin Zylberberg).

Helena Wolińska-Brus (28 February 1919 – 26 November 2008) was a military prosecutor in postwar Poland with the rank of lieutenant-colonel (podpułkownik), 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 figures in Poland's wartime Home Army. Post-communist Poland sought the extradition of Wolińska-Brus from the United Kingdom on three separate occasions between 1999 and 2008. The official charges against her were initiated by the Institute of National Remembrance, which investigates both Nazi and Communist crimes committed in Poland between the years 1939 and 1989.^[1]

Wolińska-Brus was accused of being an "accessory to a court murder", which is classified as a Stalinist crime and a crime of genocide, and is punishable by up to ten years in prison. She was also accused of organising the unlawful arrest, investigation and trial of Poland's wartime general Emil August Fieldorf, a legendary commander of the underground Polish Home Army during World War II. Fieldorf was executed on 24 February 1953, following a show-trial, and buried in a secret location – his family was never shown the body. A 1956 report commissioned during Poland's period of de-Stalinization concluded that Wolińska-Brus had violated the rule of law by her involvement in biased investigations and had also staged questionable trials that frequently resulted in executions.

Extradition requests

Grave of Włodzimierz Brus and Helena Wolińska-Brus in Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford

The first of three applications for Wolińska-Brus' extradition to Poland was made in 1999, initiated by an investigation carried out by the Institute of National Remembrance. A second application was submitted in 2001. The Polish indictments were based the claim that Wolińska-Brus had fabricated evidence which led to the execution of general Emil Fieldorf and the wrongful arrest and imprisonment of 24 other anti-Nazi resistance fighters. Both requests were refused by the Home Office; in particular, because of her advanced age and the long period of time that had elapsed since the alleged crimes occurred (the latter reason was considered to be very unfair by the Polish authorities, given that any proper investigation of her alleged crimes only became possible after the fall of communism in Poland in 1989).

In an interview with The Guardian, Wolińska-Brus said she would not return to "the country of Auschwitz and Birkenau", claiming that she would not receive a fair trial in Poland. She also claimed that her accusers were motivated by anti-Semitism. The interview contained a quote from Fieldorf's daughter, Maria, accusing Wolińska-Brus of having been "one of those careerists who are the pillars of any dictatorship."

In 2004, Poland joined the European Union, which made possible a third attempt to extradite Wolińska-Brus. In January 2006 her prosecutorial pension was revoked and later that year Polish president Lech Kaczyński also revoked the Polonia Restituta decoration that she was awarded by the Polish communist authorities in 1954.^[9] In 2007 the Institute of National Remembrance asked Polish prosecutors to issue a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) against Wolińska-Brus, which was duly issued on 20 November 2007. However, this third attempt to extradite her also failed.

Helena Wolińska-Brus died on 26 November 2008 in Oxford. Presumably to avoid further controversies, she was buried two days before the announced funeral date (5 December 2008), in a private ceremony at Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford, with only a few family members attending.^[4]

Anatol Fejgin

Anatol Fejgin (Warsaw, September 25, 1909 – July 28, 2002 also in Warsaw) was a Polish-Jewish communist before World War II, and after 1949, commander of the Stalinist political police at the Ministry of Public Security of Poland,in charge of its notorious Special Bureau (the 10th Department). During the Polish October revolution of 1956, his name – along with a number of others including his colleague Col. Józef Różański (born Josek Goldberg), and Minister Jakub Berman – came to symbolize communist terror in postwar Poland.

Fejgin was born into a middle-class Jewish family, and in 1927 began medical studies in Warsaw, which he never finished. In 1928, he joined the Communist Party of Poland and in 1929 was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison for communist agitation. Released, Fejgin was arrested again in 1932 and incarcerated for four years. After the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Fejgin escaped to Lwow in the Soviet military zone, got in touch with the NKVD and began working for the Soviet authorities. In May 1943 he joined the Soviet sponsored Polish 1st Tadeusz Kosciuszko Infantry Division, where he became a propaganda officer, a paramilitary rank commonly feared. In January 1945, Fejgin took post of the director of personal department of the political bureau of the pro-Soviet Ludowe Wojsko Polskie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatol_Fejgin

Jakub Berman

Jakub Berman (26 December 1901 – 10 April 1984) was a prominent communist in prewar Poland. Toward the end of World War II he joined the Politburo of the Polish United Workers' Party. Between 1944 and 1953, he was considered Joseph Stalin's right hand in the People's Republic of Poland – in charge of the Ministry of Public Security – the largest secret police in Polish history and one of its most repressive institutions.

Jakub Berman was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Warsaw in on 26 December 1901. He was a member of the Communist Youth Union, and in 1928 joined the early Communist Party of Poland, after the Invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the USSR, he fled to the Soviet occupied eastern part of Poland – first to Białystok and then in the spring of 1941 to Minsk. There, he worked as an editor at Sztandar Wolności (The Banner of Freedom), the Polish-language bulletin of the Belarusian Communist Party.

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Berman escaped to Moscow and later became an instructor at the Comintern school in the city of Ufa (south-east of Kuibyshev), training displaced Polish communists who formed the new Soviet sponsored Polish Workers' Party. In December 1943, he met with Joseph Stalin at the Kremlin, gained his trust and became a prominent figure among Polish communists in the USSR. In 1944, Berman joined the Politburo of the Polish Workers' Party. Upon his return to Poland in 1944 – together with hardliner Bolesław Bierut and the economist Hilary Minc – Berman formed a triumvirate of Stalinist leaders in postwar Poland.

Between 1944 and 1956, Berman was a member of the Politburo of the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP). He was responsible for propaganda, and ideology; put in charge of State Security Services (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa, UB), the largest and the most notorious secret police force in the history of the People's Republic of Poland, employing 33,200 permanent security officers, one for every 800 Polish citizens. He coordinated the preparation of numerous political trials, persecuting several hundred members of the Polish Resistance, specifically the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), the Peasant Battalions (BCh) and the National Armed Forces (NSZ).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakub_Berman

Roman Romkowski

Roman Romkowski born Natan Grünspan-Kikiel, (May 22, 1907 – July 1, 1965) was a Polish communist official of Jewish background trained by Comintern in Moscow, who changed his name and settled into Warsaw after the Soviet takeover, and became second in command (the deputy minister) in Berman's Ministry of Public Security (MBP) during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Along with several other high functionaries including Dir. Anatol Fejgin, Col. Józef Różański, Dir. Julia Brystiger and the chief supervisor of Polish State Security Services, Minister Jakub Berman from the Politburo, Romkowski came to symbolize communist terror in postwar Poland.He was responsible for the work of departments: Counter-espionage (1st), Espionage (7th), Security in the PPR–PZPR (10th Dept. run by Fejgin), and others.

Józef Różański

Józef Różański (b. Josek Goldberg; Warsaw, 13 July 1907 – 21 August 1981, Warsaw) was a communist in the prewar Second Polish Republic, a member of the Soviet NKVD and later, a colonel in the Stalinist Ministry of Public Security of Poland. Born into a Jewish family in Warsaw, Różański became active in the Communist Party of Poland before World War II. He joined the NKVD following the Soviet invasion of Poland and after the war, adopting the name Różański, served as an interrogator with the Polish Communist security apparatus (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa).

Różański was personally involved in torturing and maiming dozens of opponents of the Polish People's Republic, including anti-communist activists, as well as other, more moderate communists, and "Cursed soldiers". He gained notoriety as one of the most brutal secret police interrogators in Warsaw. Różański personally administered torture to Witold Pilecki, one of the most famous "Cursed soldiers" and the only individual who willingly went to Auschwitz Camp. Pilecki revealed no sensitive information and was executed on May 25, 1948 at Mokotów Prison by Sergeant Smietanski, the "Butcher".

Józef Różański was arrested in 1953 – at the end of the Stalinist period in Poland – and charged with torturing innocent prisoners, including Polish United Workers' Party members. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison on 23 December 1955. In July 1956, the Supreme Court reopened his case due to improprieties discovered in the original investigation. On 11 November 1957 (charged along with co-defendant Anatol Fejgin), he was again sentenced by the lower court this time to 15 years in prison. He was released in 1964, having served seven years. Różański died of cancer on 21 August 1981, and was buried at the Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw.

Różański was a brother of Jerzy Borejsza.

Jerzy Borejsza

Jerzy Borejsza born Beniamin Goldberg; 1905 in Warsaw – 1952 in Warsaw

Borejsza was born as Beniamin Goldberg to a Polish Jewish family. He was an older brother of Józef Różański – later a member of Soviet NKVD and high-ranking interrogator in the Polish communist Ministry of Public Security. As a youth, Borejsza sympathized with the Zionist radical left and anarchic political factions. After he got in trouble with the Polish authorities, his father sponsored his residence in France. Borejsza studied engineering, then Hispanic culture at the Sorbonne, and remained deeply involved with the politics and activism of anarchism.

After his studies, Borejsza returned home and was briefly enlisted in the Polish Army in the late 1920s. In 1929 he joined the Communist Party of Poland (KPP) active in the Second Polish Republic, and was imprisoned several times in the years 1933–1935 for agitation and political propaganda.

After Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, Borejsza became a vocal supporter of the new communist regime, publishing Polish language translations of Soviet propaganda.He served as director of the Ossolineum Institute in Lwów (Lviv) in 1939–1940. After the war, he aided the transport of most of Ossolineum archives to Wrocław, following the transfer of the Polish city of Lwów to the Ukrainian SSR. He was one of the founders of the Union of Polish Patriots – precursor to the puppet government of future People's Republic of Poland.Borejsza served in the Red Army, and then the Polish First Army, reaching the rank of major.

He joined the new pro-Soviet Polish Communist party, the Polish Workers' Party, and became a deputy to the State National Council. He organized much of the communist propaganda in the early days of communist Poland, and was a leading figure in the implementing of state control over the world of Polish culture, including censorship in the People's Republic of Poland.He created the giant publishing house Czytelnik (Reader). Borejsza favored a moderate approach to culture control: what he called a "gentle revolution".He supported establishing cultural relations with the West, and himself traveled to United States and the United Kingdom. In 1948 he was one of the main organizers of the World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace in Wrocław. He fell out of favor with the Stalinist hardliners who saw him as too independent, too hard to influence, and not radical enough. His political role diminished in the late 1940s, particularly after the disabling injuries he suffered in the car accident in 1949.

Ozjasz Szechter

Ozjasz Szechter (ur. 23 sierpnia 1901 w Witkowie Nowym, zm. 20 sierpnia 1982 w Warszawie) – polski dziennikarz i działacz komunistyczny skazany w procesie łuckim, Pochodził z żydowskiej rodziny: syn Natana i Klary (z domu Steinwurcel), brat Szymona.

Po wojnie krótko pracował w Związku Patriotów Polskich we Lwowie. Na polecenie KC PPR przybył do Polski, pracował jako kierownik Wydziału Prasowego Centralnej Rady Związków Zawodowych, a następnie jako zastępca redaktora naczelnego pisma związkowego „Głos Pracy” oraz redaktor w wydawnictwie Książka i Wiedza.

Należał do Polskiej Zjednoczonej Partii Robotniczej. W latach 60. związał się ze środowiskami kontestującymi system polityczny PRL. Od 1968 był inwigilowany przez SB. Uniemożliwiano mu m.in. wyjazdy zagraniczne. W maju 1977 wziął udział w odbywającej się w warszawskim kościele św. Marcina głodówce protestacyjnej przeciwko uwięzieniu przez władze PRL kilkudziesięciu działaczy KOR. Opublikował wówczas także obszerny list, w którym wyjaśniał swoje wybory życiowe i przyznawał, że jego zdaniem „Marks i Engels jednak się pomylili”, a swoją dotychczasową działalność polityczną ocenił negatywnie.

Z małżeństwa z Sabiną Schatz (lub Chatz) miał syna Jerzego (ur. 1929). Jego synem z nieformalnego związku z Heleną Michnik jest Adam Michnik.

Hilary Minc

Hilary Minc (24 August 1905, Kazimierz Dolny – 26 November 1974, Warsaw) was a communist politician in Stalinist Poland and a pro-Soviet Marxist economist.

Minc was born into the middle-class Jewish family of Oskar Minc and Stefania née Fajersztajn. Minc joined the Communist Party of Poland before World War II. Between 1944-1956, he was a member of the PWP/PUWP Politburo of the Polish Workers' Party.

Minc was the third in command in Bolesław Bierut's political apparatus following the Soviet takeover, after Jakub Berman and Bierut himself. He served as the Minister of Industry, Minister of Industry and Commerce, and deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs during the Stalinist period in the People's Republic of Poland all the way until the Polish October revolution of 1956. Minc was a close associate of the Polish Communist leader Władysław Gomułka in their joint meetings with Joseph Stalin at the Kremlin. Stalin personally assigned Minc first to the Industry and then to the Transportation ministry of Poland in 1949. He was one of the main architect's of Poland's Six-Year Plan, implemented in 1950. Minc's wife, Julia, was an Editor-in-Chief of the Polish Press Agency until 1954.