Author
Józef Mackiewicz 1902-1985

He was born in Saint Petersburg on the 1st of April, 1902. In 1907 the Mackiewiczs moved to Vilnius, where Józef began to attend school. In 1919-1920, as a volunteer, he took part in the Polish-Soviet war. In 1921 he took up studies in natural sciences, first at the University of Warsaw, and then in Vilnius. In 1922 he began his collaboration with the local ‘Słowo’ daily – collaboration which lasted until 1939 – a paper whose editor-in-chief was his elder brother Stanisław ‘Cat’ Mackiewicz. After the outbreak of the Second World War, Józef remained in his hometown. In 1941 he published three articles in the Polish-language Goniec Codzienny issued by the German authorities, which then served as the basis for accusing him of quislingism. In obscure circumstances the Military Tribunal of the Home Army (AK) sentenced him to death and then overturned that sentence. In May 1943, invited by the Germans - but also with the permission of Polish underground authorities - he went to Katyn, where he witnessed the exhumation of the victims of the Soviet crime of genocide perpetrated on Polish officers. Later he described that event in an interview for Goniec Codzienny”. In 1944, in the face of the approach of the Red Army, he forced his way to Warsaw and then to Kraków, from where, in the beginning of the following year, he left for the Western Europe. In Rome he worked out a white paper on the Katyn massacre. In 1947 he settled down in London, only to move to Munich in 1955, where he lived until his death, keeping himself with his modest fees or royalties. He collaborated with Polish emigration magazines such as Wiadomości of London and the Paris Kultura, as well as with émigré Russian, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian press. He earned the reputation of an uncompromising publicist, constantly at odds with the main political and ideological currents of the emigration thought. His consistently anti-Communist standpoint ruled out any compromise with the authorities of the Polish People’s Republic, which became the reason for the severing of Józef’s relations with his brother, who decided to return to Poland in 1956, shortly after holding the post of Prime Minister of Polish Government-in-Exile (1954-1955). Józef Mackiewicz’s anti-Communism also meant no support at all for the notion of political realism understood as the necessity to accept the fact of Poland’s subordination to, and dependence on, the Soviet Union, resulting from a realistic assessment of the geopolitical situation. His political views and ideological beliefs were also expressed in his novels which - although for a long time they were not properly appreciated and remained largely unknown, especially in Poland, also because of the controversies provoked by their author’s attitude – constitute outstanding achievements of 20th-century Polish literature. His best works include Droga donikąd (1955), Kontra (1957), Sprawa pułkownika Miasojedowa (1962), and Lewa wolna (1965). In 1962 Mackiewicz published Zwycięstwo prowokacji (The Triumph of Provocation) – his debate with Communist ideology which revealed the mechanisms behind its expansion in the world. Also important for Polish political thought are his books on the policies towards Communism pursued by the Popes John XXIII and Paul VI, which he was very critical of, namely W cieniu krzyża (In the Shadow of the Cross; 1972), and Watykan w cieniu czerwonej gwiazdy (1975). Droga Pani…, a selection of articles by Józef Mackiewicz and his long-time partner Barbara Toporska was issued in 1984. In 1971, the President of the Republic of Poland conferred on Mackiewicz the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta. Józef Mackiewicz died in Munich on the 31st of January, 1985.

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