You may not know that from 1944 to 1989 the country of Poland was under communist rule. Kazimierz Moczarski was an officer in the Polish Home Army, a resistance movement formed during Poland’s occupation by the German Nazis.
Moczarski served as the Head of the Department of Personnel Sabotage within the Polish resistance to the Nazis and helped carry out the Warsaw Uprising on October 7, 1944. His task was to assassinate Nazi officials and collaborators in Warsaw.
When the communists took the power of Poland . Moczarski was sent to Mokotów Prison in Warsaw, which was built by the communists and still operating today.
Moczarski was a journalist before the War, he later published Conversations with an Executioner. His book contains the conversations he had with a significant member of the Nazi SS who had direct involvement in the brutal Nazi response to the Warsaw Uprising, which Moczarski had survived.
During his imprisonment Moczarski suffered 49 different types of torture.
To humiliate him the Polish communists threw Moczarski into jail with SS Officer SS-Gruppenfuhrer Jurgen Stroop, who is best known for his brutal suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto rebellion in 1943, and ultimately its destruction.
Communism In Poland
Władysław Gomułka was the leader of the Communist Party of Poland in 1942, heading up the Polish Workers Party. After the Soviet invasion during World War II, Stalin and Wanda Wasilewska together directed the creation of a new party, The Polish Patriots.
Poland remained under communist rule for a 45 year period, in which all major foreign and domestic policy decisions were made in Moscow.
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He died on September 27, 1975, in Warsaw, Poland.
Moczarski Imprisoned
Moczarski was arrested in August 1946 by the Polish secret police, the UB, and sentenced to 10 years in jail. His sentence was shorted to 5 years in February 1947, but this was not the case in the end.
Until January 1955 Kazimierz Moczarski believed himself to be on death row, sentenced to death by the Polish communists. In fact, his sentence had been commuted to life in prison, but no one bothered to tell him!
As punishment Moczarski was thrown in prison with SS Police Officer Jürgen Stroop until Stroop was executed on 6 March 1952.
Torture
Moczarski wrote in a letter about the torture he endured under his captors including beatings, burning, hair pulling, forced sleep deprivation, and many others. At one point he was forbidden to shower for years at a time.
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