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Jan Józef Lipski - Who was Józef Różański? (54/215)

3,484 views · Published 24 October 2017 · 3:05 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · News & Politics

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Jan Józef Lipski (1926-1991) was a writer, literary critic, and one of Poland's best known political activists. He fought in the Warsaw Uprising, co-founded the Workers' Defence Committee (KOR), and, from 1987, re-established and led the Polish Socialist Party. [Listener: Jacek Petrycki, Marcel Łoziński; date recorded: 1989]

TRANSCRIPT: Sometimes, if I'm in the company of people who are less familiar with my history, I like to play a game when I suddenly say, ‘When I worked for Różański then this or that happened’. That's when everybody turns pale and looks at me horrified because if somebody worked for Różański they more often than not were somehow connected with the Ministry of Public Security [MBP]. Różański was head of the 10th Department which dealt with issues that were particularly significant, the running of this department, including, although not exclusively, issues concerning the party and its internal affairs, although this was not all. You could say that the most important matters, the most important investigations, the preparation of the most important trials passed through this department and mainly through Różański who had a well earned reputation for being a psychopath and a sadist. The only contentious issue was how frequently he himself tortured people and he gives the impression – I know a little about his trial as I knew a solicitor who had a lot to say on the subject – he gives the impression that he very rarely does this himself and even then it was hard to prove that he'd been involved, while he issued orders which were carried out in his presence, so the difference is subtle and not all that great. Różański, when the purges began in the Ministry of Public Security and even some time after the MBP had been dissolved, some kind of Committee was formed, I don't remember what it was called, I came back from a TB sanatorium and learned that we have a new director and that he's wandering from room to room introducing himself. And the director's name? It was Różański. None of my colleagues knew at that point who Różański was because the names of the officials at the Ministry of Public Security, with the exception of one minister Radkiewicz, were not generally in the public domain and only the initiated knew these names, but I happened to know who Różański was because someone whom he had tortured had a father who was a friend of my father-in-law, thanks to which I knew a few things. By then, Światło's revelations had begun and I was keenly listening to them, if the name Różański was mentioned – at that point it hadn't yet spread very broadly – well, I knew what to connect it with.

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