Roman Romkowski born Nasiek (Natan) Grinszpan-Kikiel, Tadeusz Piotrowski
''Poland's holocaust''. Page 60
McFarland, 1998. . 437 pages. (February 16, 1907 – July 12, 1965) was a Polish communist official trained by Comintern in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

. After the Soviet takeover of Poland Romkowski settled in

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

Piotrowski 1998, ibid, p. 64.
/ref> and became second in command (the deputy minister) in the Ministry of Public Security (MBP or colloquially UB) during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Along with several other high functionaries including

Stanisław Radkiewicz Stanisław Radkiewicz (; 19 January 1903 – 13 December 1987) was a Polish communist activist with Soviet citizenship, a member of the pre-war Communist Party of Poland and of the post-war Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR). As head of the M ...

, Anatol Fejgin,

Józef Różański Józef Różański (; born Josef Goldberg; 13 July 1907, in Warsaw – 21 August 1981, in Warsaw) was an officer in the Soviet NKVD Secret Police and later, a Colonel in the Polish Ministry of Public Security (UB), a communist secret police. Born ...

, Julia Brystiger and the chief supervisor of Polish State Security Services, Minister

Jakub Berman Jakub Berman (23 December 1901 – 10 April 1984) was a Polish communist politician. Was born in Jewish family, son of Iser and Guta. An activist during the Second Polish Republic, in post-war communist Poland he was a member of the Politburo ...

from the Politburo, Romkowski came to symbolize communist terror in postwar Poland.

Gazeta Wyborcza ''Gazeta Wyborcza'' (; ''The Electoral Gazette'' in English) is a Polish daily newspaper based in Warsaw, Poland. It is the first Polish daily newspaper after the era of " real socialism" and one of Poland's newspapers of record, covering the ...

, 11 Sept. 2002,

. Retrieved from Internet Archive, June 21, 2013. He was responsible for the work of departments: Counter-espionage (1st), Espionage (7th), Security in the (10th Dept. run by Fejgin), and others. Roman Romkowski biography
"Niewinnie straceni w latach 1945–56". OptimusNet.

Early life

Work in security services

Arrest

Romkowski was arrested on April 23, 1956, during the socialist

Polish October Polish October (), also known as October 1956, Polish thaw, or Gomułka's thaw, marked a change in the politics of Poland in the second half of 1956. Some social scientists term it the Polish October Revolution, which was less dramatic than the ...

revolution, and brought to trial along with functionaries responsible for gross violations of human rights law and their abuse of power.Heather Laskey
''Night voices: heard in the shadow of Hitler and Stalin''. Pages 191–194
McGill-Queen's Press MQUP, 2003. . 254 pages. Historian Heather Laskey alleges that it was probably not a coincidence that the high ranking Stalinist security officers put on trial by Gomułka were

Władysław Gomułka Władysław Gomułka (; 6 February 1905 – 1 September 1982) was a Polish communist politician. He was the ''de facto'' leader of post-war Poland from 1947 until 1948. Following the Polish October he became leader again from 1956 to 1970. G ...

was captured by Światło and imprisoned by Romkowski in 1951 on Soviet orders, and interrogated by both, him and Fejgin. Gomułka escaped physical torture only as a close associate of

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...

, "Poland's New Chief", LIFE Magazine, 26 November 1956. Pages: 173–182

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

and was released three years later.Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, Sergeĭ Khrushchev, George Shriver, Stephen Shenfield
''Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev: Statesman, 1953-1964.'' Page 643.
Penn State Press, 2007. . 1126 pages.

The court proceedings

At trial, Col. Różański didn't deny that he routinely tortured prisoners including

Polish United Workers' Party The Polish United Workers' Party ( pl, Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza; ), commonly abbreviated to PZPR, was the communist party which ruled the Polish People's Republic as a one-party state from 1948 to 1989. The PZPR had led two other lega ...

members, and he didn't apologize for his actions. Instead, he pointed a finger at Romkowski and continuously repeated the Leninist argument that "

the end justifies the means In ethical philosophy, consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from a ...

". For him, torturing people was a daily double-shift job, nothing more, nothing less. He admitted that all charges against his victims were falsified on site by his department. Roman Romkowski had been put on trial along with Józef Różański and a second Jewish defendant from his department, Anatol Fejgin. Romkowski insisted that Różański should have been removed already in 1949 for his destructive activities, even though, Romkowski himself taught Różański everything about torture. Both, Romkowski and Różański, were sentenced to 15 years in prison on 11 November 1957,Jacek Topyło
"Dossier oprawców."
''Glaukopis'' Magazine, 2007. Page 3. for unlawful imprisonment and mistreatment of innocent detainees. Feign was sentenced to 12 years, on similar charges.Barbara Fijałkowska
RÓŻAŃSKI "LIBERAŁEM"
15 December 2002, Fundacja Orientacja ''abcnet''; see also: B. Fijałkowska, ''Borejsza i Różański. Przyczynek do dziejów stalinizmu w Polsce'', . A well-known writer

Kazimierz Moczarski Kazimierz Damazy Moczarski (21 July 1907 – 27 September 1975) was a Polish writer and journalist, an officer of the Polish Home Army (''noms de guerre'': Borsuk, Grawer, Maurycy, and Rafał; active in anti-Nazi resistance). Kazimierz Moczar ...

from AK, interrogated by Romkowski's subordinates from January 9, 1949 till June 6, 1951, described 49 different types of torture he endured. Beatings included truncheon blows to bridge of nose, salivary glands, chin, shoulder blades, bare feet and toes (particularly painful), heels (ten blows each foot, several times a day), cigarette burns on lips and eyelids and burning of fingers. Sleep deprivation, resulting in near-madness – meant standing upright in a narrow cell for seven to nine days with frequent blows to the face – a hallucinatory method called by the interrogators "Zakopane". General Romkowski told him on November 30, 1948, that he personally requested this "sheer hell".Stéphane Courtois, Mark Kramer
''Livre noir du Communisme: crimes, terreur, répression''.
The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, ''

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retir ...

'', 1999, 858 pages. . Pages 377–378. The court announced that the actions of Roman Romkowski and his Ministry demoralised the Party as much as its own functionaries. Jakub Berman, the chief supervisor of State Security Services incriminated by Józef Światło who defected to

the West West is a cardinal direction or compass point. West or The West may also refer to: Geography and locations Global context * The Western world * Western culture and Western civilization in general * The Western Bloc, countries allied with NATO ...

, resigned from his Politburo post in May and was evaluated by the 20th Congress, which launched a process of partial democratisation of Polish political as well as economic life. The number of security agents at the ministry was cut by 22%, and 9,000 socialist and populist politicians were released from prison on top of some 34,644 detainees across the country. "The routing of the Polish Stalinists was indeed complete."A. Kemp-Welch
''Poland under Communism: a Cold War history''. Pages 83-85.

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer. Cambridge University Pre ...

, 2008. . 444 pages.

Notes and references

{{DEFAULTSORT:Romkowski, Roman 1907 births 1965 deaths Politicians from Moscow Jewish Polish politicians Jewish socialists Communist Party of Poland politicians Polish Workers' Party politicians Polish United Workers' Party members Polish intelligence officers (1943–1990)

Early life

Work in security services

Arrest

The court proceedings

See also

Notes and references