Polish outrage at 'innocent' police list leak

[emad]

Telegraph
By Kate Connolly in Berlin
(Filed: 09/02/2005)

The largest single leak of secret police files from the communist era has prompted outrage in Poland as people rush to see if they or their friends are on the list.

The document, leaked from the Polish institute managing Cold War files, includes almost a quarter of a million names and can be downloaded easily on the internet.

The fact that the file lists the names and personal files of former secret service agents and collaborators as well as their victims has heightened the confusion and anger. The list, 240,000 names long, does not identify who belongs to which category.

"Everyone on this list is equally guilty and not guilty," wrote Jerzy Baczynski, editor-in-chief of the weekly Polityka. "This is morally absurd."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=WJF3GZSR43DF3QFIQMFSM54AVCBQ0JVC?xml=/news/2005/02/09/wpol09.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/02/09/ixworld.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=40382

[adigal]

2. I want to see the American list

and see if we all are on it!!

[mermaid]

4. Don't Worry, We're All On It!!

anyone who hates Georgie Porgie is probably on it.

fucking blood-drinking, jackbooted, mean-spirited, heartless ghouls!!

[emad]

3. See also recent DU on Poles' uproar:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1214733

[emad]

5. Poland in uproar over leak of spy files

AP in Warsaw
Saturday February 5, 2005
The Guardian

Prosecutors in Warsaw are to investigate the leak of communist-era files on to the internet which has unleashed a frenzy among Poles scrambling to find their names or those of people they know.

The alphabetical list of 240,000 people from the state-run Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw includes former secret agents, informers, secret service employees and victims of persecution, but it does not indicate who is which.

This has sparked a political debate over whether the leak will finally purge Poland of communist-era collaborators, or irreparably damage innocent people's lives.

"Finding oneself on this list does not mean anything, but in a broad sense it could place someone in a situation of suspicion," wrote Father Adam Boniecki of the Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1406281,00.html

[emad]

Sacked journo denies internet link:

A journalist, Bronislaw Wildstein, has admitted copying the list from the archives of the institute and has been sacked from his paper, Rzeczpospolita, but he denies posting the list on the internet, saying he gave it only to a few trusted colleagues.

"National prosecutors believe that the case has so many unclear aspects that may suggest a crime has been committed that we have made the decision to clarify it," the deputy national prosecutor, Kazimierz Olejnik, said yesterday.

The investigation may focus on laws protecting personal data, which carry a two-year prison term, a spokesman added. Prosecutors are also investigating whether someone at the institute helped Mr Wildstein copy the list, which was available only to researchers and others cleared for access.

Hundreds of people who found their name, or what appeared to be their name, on the list are crowding the institute's offices to apply to look in their files.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1406281,00.html

[rocktivity]

Hasn't Poland set a date for pulling out their troops?

Maybe this is an attempt to embarass the government as revenge.

A journalist, Bronislaw Wildstein, has admitted copying the list...but he denies posting the list on the internet, saying he gave it only to a few trusted colleagues.

Well guess what, Wildy--by copying and distributing the list, YOU'RE THE ONE WHO LEAKED IT!!! What's Polish for "duh!"

:headbang:
rocknation

[emad]

Polish "withdrawl method" strongly influenced by Papal theology?

See also today's:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1223831&mesg_id=1223831

[bobthedrummer]

Something like that should happen here in America-the publishing of the

"lists" of citizens and organizations secretly held for political reasons, I know I'm on a few of them as a former associate of SDS.

[emad]

6. The seminal role played by the Polish Fascist Party during the

1920s and early 30s in acting as co-ordinators/go-betweens for Joseph Stalin and the emerging Nazi party in Germany cannot be overstated. Nor their role in setting up financial conduits administered by Eugenio Pacelli (later Pius XII) which payed a staggering role in relocating myriad right wing nutters to South America, both before and after WWII.

The party regrouped in the UK after 1945, setting themselves up in London as the official opposition to the "Polish Government in Exile", and held their many monthly meetings in South Kensington's Anglo-Polish Hearth Club ("Ognisko Polskie").

Their role in moneylaundering of stolen funds that found their way into the bank accounts of the Henley-on-Thames based Polish order of the Marian Fathers is also noteworthy, as is the accumulation of evidence of their corruption that led to those bank accounts being invested in Banco Ambrosiano-run investment portfolios linked to assets controllled by Cardinal Marcinkus in his role as CEO of the Vatican's Institute of Religious works, which went down the pan in '82 when Ambrosiano folded and its MD Roberto Calvi was found mysteriously dead under London's Blackfriars' Bridge.

DU readers are no doubt amiliar with recent coverage of the reconvened Rome murder trial of P2 Lodge members charged with killing Calvi, after 22 years of an official, earlier verdict of "suicide"...

EDIT: no wonder some family members are feeling uncomfortable about this.....

[pnorman]

The first few paragraphs of the above are fascinating.

But can you cite sources for it all? What was the actual name of the party you had identified as the Polish Fascist Party? Google turned up: "PWN-PSN (Polish National Community -Polish National Party)" but that seems to have been a post WW2 organization.

You reignited my interest in Central-European history; particularly Polish history, while Googling the above. Here's one site I'll study carefully and begin Googling from: http://www.kasprzyk.demon.co.uk/www/RestoredRepublic.html

pnorman

[emad]

Stronnictwo Narodowe is the official Polish Nationalist/Fascist

Party name. Its origins lie in the Polish 1863 uprising led my Dmowski, Traugut and Krajewski, all of whom, I understand, were executed for treason as a result of the rebellion.

Their descendants continued the work of extreme right-wing nationalism in Poland and in Europe.

In the 1960s and 1970s they grouped around Prince Stanislaw Radziwill, a Lithuanian con man and P2 Lodge member, who once married Jackie Kennedy's sister Caroline Lee Bouvier Canfield, the ex-wife of US national Michael Canfield.

Their political activities were headquartered in Henley on Thames, Oxon, UK at Fawley Court, a British Grade I country mansion rented by the Marian Fathers - a Polish order which was subsequently busted for child abuse, theft, money laundering, sponsorship of UK mainland terrorism and perverting the course of justice.

The Stronnictwo Narodowe continues to thrive in the UK albeit in a pared down way.

I will post more about them when I get my hands on a translation from Polish about their cold war activities in the UK, their links to IRA funding in the US between 1965 and 1988 and their financial connections to the religious cult Opus Dei.

[pnorman]

Thanks for the detailed fill-in.

I now have enough key-words to start Googling. It has to be pointed out that extreme "nationalist" groups in the era leading up to WW2, didn't necessarily become pro-Nazi. My admittedly sketchy knowledge that region, led me to believe that there was very little sympathy for the Nazi invasion among Poles, although there most certainly was in many other Nazi-occupied countries ("liberated" to use the BushCo term).

Here's a question you may be able to answer: Some time back, I had heard a quote attributed to Churchill, about the Polish people: "Magnificent in defeat, base and ignoble in victory". He was referring to some of the seamier aspects of the birth of the new Polish nation after WW1. It's clung to my memory all this time, but I've been unable to confirm it.

pnorman

[fshrink]

1. Exactly right! nt