Jaruzelski accused of being a spy

19th March 2010

© PAP Jaruzelski finds himself in the dock once again Share:

General Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland’s last communist leader, has another battle on his hands after documents surfaced implying that he spied on his fellow army officers for the socialist state’s security apparatus.

Documents unearthed by historians at the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) indicate that Jaruzelski, who faces charges connected to the shooting dead of over 30 striking shipyard workers in 1970, was incorporated into counter intelligence in 1952.

IPN historian Wojciech Sawicki said a file found in the records of the East German secret police, the Stasi, make clear that the general was a spy after being by recruited by Captain Czeslaw Kiszczak, who later served as Jaruzelski’s interior minister during the martial law years.

Jaruzelski, then a rising star of the Polish army, was apparently tasked with providing information on his military comrades, and proved good at his job.

“In 1952, Comrade Jaruzelski, was taken on by Cpt. Kiszczak as an unofficial collaborator...and used to perform counter-intelligence tasks,” the original document claims. “Co-operation was rated as very active and valuable.”

But the accusations of spying met with a curt denial from the 85-year-old general.

“This is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard of. How on earth could I have met Kiszczak. He was in the navy; in a completely different system,” said an angry Jaruzelski.

Kiszczak also rejected the accusations, issuing a forthright denial that he had ever recruited his future commander into the shadowy world of counter-intelligence.

“In 1952 I was head of a counter-intelligence division. I sat in the woods and I had no idea that there was a man named Jaruzelski,” he told the PSP new service. “Only in the second half of the 1950s did I learn of that name, but I didn’t meet General Jaruzelski until the late 60s or early 70s.

“This is complete nonsense, I do not know where it came from and who invented the provocation,” he added.

The IPN also claimed that the reason they had to use Stasi files is that Kiszczak destroyed any evidence implicating Jaruzelski.