Lesser Known Episodes from the Life of Józef Cyrankiewicz

Abstract

This is a digressive and polemical article in which the author discusses the selected, more widely unknown episodes from the biography of Józef Cyrankiewicz, covering the period up to the 1950s. Above all, the following issues are analysed and interpreted: rumours about Cyrankiewicz’s compromising behaviour during his stay in Auschwitz; his attitude to the political past of his own socialist milieu, including the trial of the members of the Polish Socialist Party – Freedom, Equality, Independence (Polish acronym: PPS-WRN) (among others, the imprisoned nestor of the movement, Kazimierz Pużak); his relations with Witold Pilecki and Władysław Dering; his actual activity during the war. The author points out some exemplary methodological errors on which the accusations against Cyrankiewicz are usually based. The findings and interpretations result from examining selected academic and popular literature on the subject, memoirs and printed documents, as well as materials from the Central Archives of Modern Records and the Archives of the Institute of National Remembrance.