In Pasikowski's cult "Dogs", former SS officer Franz Maurer chooses honest service in the police, while most of his companions decide to descend into the criminal underworld. Before they started murdering for money and influence in the drug business, they found time to settle past scores.
The beginning of 1989. The Round Table talks will begin soon. In the face of an unprecedented economic crisis and a change in the geopolitical situation, general Jaruzelski has matured to share power with the anti-communist opposition.
For the charges of Czesław Kiszczak, secret police officers from the Ministry of the Interior, this is a chance to take advantage of a privileged position. Operational knowledge, contacts and blackmail opportunities were to ensure a soft landing in the new political and economic reality . Those were also the last moments to settle scores with impunity from the past ...
The seat of the Ministry of the Interior at Rakowiecka Street. Were its residents in 1989 only wondering how to best position themselves in the new times ... and settle accounts? Contemporary photo (photo:Lukasz2, license CC BY-SA 3.0).
Murder in a minute
Father Stefan Niedzielak had aroused the fury of the Security Service for many years. He was an activist of the Home Army, chaplain of the Warsaw Uprising and researcher of the secret burials of Stalinist victims in the so-called "Connection" . The authorities hated him primarily for his courageous search for the truth about the Katyn massacre.
In the Sanctuary for the Fallen and Murdered in the East he built, Niedzielak delivered uncompromising anti-Soviet sermons. We didn't have to wait long for the consequences. Regularly received anonymous letters and threatening calls. Their content left no doubt: you will die like Popiełuszko .
Sanctuary "Fallen and Murdered in the East" at the Church of st. Charles Borromeo in Warsaw. Father Stefan Niedzielak's life work (photo:masti, license CC BY-SA 2.5).
On January 20, 1989, Niedzielak did not feel very well. He had had a bad feeling since this morning. In a conversation with a friend from the curia, he lost the sentence: they will finally kill me .
In the evening he was tired watching TV in his chair when he received the first punch in the face. The 75-year-old priest took up an unequal fight, but a hail of blows fell on him. As he tried to get closer to the window to call for help, one of the attackers stuck a knee in his back and broke his neck.
Only trained specialists killed in this way. Not even a minute has passed since the attackers broke into the presbytery .
Murderous trio - two men and a woman
In an extremely inept investigation, little has been established . The policemen secured the hair that the priest held in his hand, and fragments of a small latex glove, probably belonging to a woman, from one of the attackers.
Drawers and wardrobes were opened, but the money stored in them was not lost - the equivalent of a few average monthly salaries. It was probably just about creating a clutter and robbery illusion.
The city bus driver remembered three passengers on the last evening's course - a woman and two men, one of them very athletic. A police dog also indicated the place where the perpetrators were staying at the bus stop. All these threads, as well as the link between the murder and the numerous threats against the priest, were never taken seriously in the investigation.
A fragment of a latex glove found in the hands of a priest indicated the involvement of a woman in this crime. However, law enforcement agencies did not follow this lead. Case? (photo - Melkom, license CC BY-SA 3.0)
Instead, the absurd theses were promoted that the deceased had fallen twice (!), Breaking his spine . There were also claims that the murder was neither robotic nor political in nature . Of course, the perpetrators could not be identified.
Interestingly, when in 2006 investigators of the Institute of National Remembrance wanted to return to this mysterious murder, it turned out that the most important evidence had disappeared from the case file. Including, but not limited to, hair and pieces of gloves found at the scene.
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Death commando?
Patryk Pleskot, author of the book “Zabić. Political murders in the People's Republic of Poland ”, puts forward several hypotheses about the nature of the murder. It could have been a party-state order to intimidate the opposition before the Round Table talks began. The version about the provocation of the hardliners of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who are reluctant to reach an agreement with Solidarity, is also likely. It is also possible that it was a revenge on the part of the SB - perhaps a "private" initiative of several officers. Attorney Jan Olszewski (later Prime Minister of the Third Polish Republic) did not rule out yet another hypothesis - that the KGB was behind the priest's death.
Interestingly, for Patryk Pleskot a certain rumor that was circulating around Poland at that time was not without rational foundations. In his book, he writes: The hypothesis about the "death commando" could be considered highly speculative and not very convincing, were it not for the striking fact:Fr. Niedzielak was not the only one.
Popiełuszko's successor
Father Stanisław Suchowolec was ordained a priest in June 1983. As a curate, he was sent to the parish in Suchowola, 40 kilometers from Białystok, near the hometown of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko.
The parish church in Suchowola. It was here that the curate was Stanisław Suchowolec (photo:Polimerek, license CC BY-SA 3.0).
Both priests liked each other quickly. Stanisław was fascinated by his older friend, known all over Poland, and wanted to imitate him. Father Popieluszko once said to his mother: Mother, don't worry. If - God forbid - something happens to me, then Staszek will replace me .
The murder of Father Jerzy was a turning point in his life for Stanisław Suchowolec. He began to celebrate masses for his homeland, and a symbolic grave and a wooden cross were erected in front of the church in Suchowola with the information that priest Popiełuszko was murdered by SS-bets .
This, of course, quickly attracted Fr. Stanisław, the interest of the ministry. The number of harassment he has experienced over the years is astonishing. Letters and phone calls with threats of death. Several times of beatings with political undertones, during which the attackers shouted: This is for Solidarity! We'll knock it out of your head, shit!
The death of Jerzy Popiełuszko changed the life of Father Suchowolec. He entered the path that led to his sudden death as well (photo:Andrzej Iwański, license CC BY-SA 3.0).
There was also a series of mysterious malfunctions in his cars that would lead to a road accident, such as steering maladjustment or loose wheel bolts.
The Bialystok Office of Internal Affairs put pressure on the curia to transfer the rebellious priest to another parish. In 1986, the young priest moved to Białystok, in the Dojlidy housing estate for workers. Here, however, even more people came to his masses than in Suchowola, and priest Stanisław bluntly compared the communists to Satan .
Half-minute fire
It was the night of January 29-30, 1989, just 9 days after the murder of Father Niedzielak, and a week before the Round Table talks began. The housekeeper, who lived in the attic of the Białystok presbytery, noticed three figures among the trees, including one woman, hurrying away towards the road.
At that moment, a quiet drama unfolded in the apartment of priest Stanisław Suchowolec. After returning from the walk, the priest was stunned. The murderers poured over his body, a cross hanging on the wall, a bench and an electric stove that smelled of flammable substance and set fire to it .
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Father Suchowolec poisoned himself instantly with carbon monoxide. The fire in the room was burning for literally half a minute, so quickly there was no oxygen in the room. Another lacy job - a perfect murder within tens of seconds.
The memory of Father Suchowolec in the Dojlidy of Białystok is so great that one of the streets was named after him. It is located at, among others this Orthodox church (photo:Henryk Borawski, license CC BY-SA 3.0).
How do I get my victim drunk?
In the investigation, the prosecutor's office tried to prove the thesis that there was an unfortunate accident - a fire broke out as a result of a failure of the Farel electric heater. She pointed out that the priest's blood contained over 1.5 per mille of alcohol. The priest's friends, however, assured that he avoided alcohol. He was never seen drunk, and two weeks before his death, he made solemn public vows of abstinence.
Communist prosecutors did not take into account the possibility that alcohol could have been administered to an unconscious priest without his will. This is one of the favorite methods of the secret police's actions. It was enough to recall that another priest, Sylwester Zych, happened a month later. The three attackers tried to give the priest alcohol and strip him of his clothes . Ultimately, Fr. Zych was murdered in July of the same year.
There were attempts to make victims of the alcohol addiction out of priests Suchowolec and Zych. The photo shows a poster from the times of the Polish People's Republic.
It was only in free Poland that the investigators qualified the entire incident as a murder, not an accident - but the perpetrators, of course, were never detected.
Another order - liquidate one of "our"?
The murders of priest Niedzielak and Suchowolec have surprisingly many common points. A short time interval between one and the other crime, testimonies of witnesses who saw two men and a woman, the opposing activity of priests, "professionalism" of the murders committed, no robbery motive, inept investigations, obliterating the traces and, of course, the failure to detect the perpetrators. Is it enough to make the hypothesis about the Esbeck death commando more plausible? Did the same people try to murder - and in a few months they murdered - Father Sylwester Zych?
Interestingly, there are testimonies of witnesses who saw two men and a woman leaving the Jaroszewicz property - right after the murder of the former prime minister of the People's Republic of Poland and his wife. Was this time the death commando sent to the liquidation of one of "his people" who knew too much? We will probably never know the truth.