Roman Romkowski

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. After the Soviet takeover of Poland Romkowski settled in WarsawPiotrowski 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, Anatol Fejgin, Józef Różański, Julia Brystiger and the chief supervisor of Polish State Security Services, Minister Jakub Berman from the Politburo, Romkowski came to symbolize communist terror in postwar Poland. Gazeta Wyborcza, 11 Sept. 2002, Warsaw. 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 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 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, "Poland's New Chief", LIFE Magazine, 26 November 1956. Pages: 173–182
Google Books 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 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". 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 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'', 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, 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, 2008. . 444 pages.

See also

* History of Polish intelligence services

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)