Drowning in the blood of the Warsaw Uprising, razing the capital to the ground, killing the cursed soldiers after the war - this was a tragic lesson from which Poles were finally to draw conclusions. Another Polish revolution - Solidarity - was already peaceful. The gun fighting gene hasn't disappeared though…
Hands up! Give back the gun! On behalf of the Insurgent Home Army! Militia sergeant Zdzisław Karos, who was driving to work, could not believe what he was hearing. Frosty February morning in 1982, Warsaw tram line 24 is jammed, the sad reality of martial law. And three frail teenage boys who, by threatening him with a captured TT, wanted to deprive him of their service weapon.
- Sonny ... - muttered indulgently sergeant Karos, grabbing the barrel of the gun with which the shaken Robert Chechłacz had scared him. A struggle, a shot, a policeman badly wounded in the stomach fell to the floor. He died five days later. Two children were orphaned.
TT. Young 'Home Army soldiers' threatened sergeant Karos with this type of pistol (photo:KEN, license CC BY-SA 3.0).
A real uprising in spring
The Armed Forces of Underground Poland , a conspiratorial group of several teenagers, had only formed a month earlier. The young men from Grodzisk Mazowiecki were impressed by Stanisław Matejczuk, who was commuting from Lublin.
A history student stunned high school students with fairy tales of the nationwide armed resistance against the dictatorship Wojciech Jaruzelski and plans to start a national uprising. He assured that it would explode any moment, in the spring.
Matejczuk instructed the boys to organize themselves into conspiratorial Fridays, assume nicknames and conduct intelligence, propaganda and small sabotage activities. Everything according to the patterns developed several dozen years earlier by the Home Army and the Gray Ranks.
And perhaps no tragedy would have happened if the boys had only thrown out leaflets in solidarity. Unfortunately, a completely utopian plan was born in young, hot heads removing people interned in Warsaw's Białołęka district. For this, in turn, they needed weapons…
Detention Center in Białołęka - the largest center for internees during the martial law and the main goal of the Insurgent Home Army (photo:Grzegorz Gołębiowski, license CC BY-SA 4.0).
Guns in the loudspeaker at the rectory
There was only one way to get a gun - by disarming a policeman or a soldier on the street. For obvious reasons, the first pistol was the hardest to get. Grotowi (Robert Chechłacz) and Kowacz (Tomasz Łupanow), however, was lucky. In Grodzisk they managed to overpower and rob a completely drunk policeman of the service weapon .
By threatening with the first pistol captured by an accidentally met on the bus a standard-bearer, they obtained another weapon. And so on until the entire group is armed. The plan seemed to have no weaknesses…
Meanwhile contact with Student it was very difficult. Matejczuk appeared only once a week - two with mysterious recommendations, supposedly coming from the very top. Therefore, in search of authority, inspiration and support, the boys turned to Father Sylwester Zych from the parish of St. Anna in Grodzisk.
The 31-year-old clergyman had great contact with young people. He discussed, invited people to the rectory, he quickly switched to "you" and treated as partners. This time, however, he was very seriously concerned about the activity of his charges and the enormous risk they had taken.
The initiate agreed to take for safekeeping two captured guns, which he hid in a church loudspeaker, and make the presbytery available to them for conspiratorial meetings.
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Zych, however, refused to take up the post of the commander of the Polish Underground Armed Forces seeing for himself rather the role of a moral guide. As he later explained: as a priest, I felt obliged to provide them with help and shelter.
It was here that Father Sylwester Zych celebrated his masses in peace, until his life was changed by contact with a group of young fighters ... Church of St. Anna in Grodzisk Mazowiecki in 2007 (photo:Jan Stradowski, license CC BY 3.0).
A priest at the head of an organization that wants to overthrow the political system by force
As might be expected, the communist repression apparatus reacted extremely vehemently to the murder of its man. It doesn't matter that it was only a policeman - huge resources and the best specialists were involved in explaining the matter.
Unaware of the unleashed storm, members of the Uprising Home Army practiced shooting with captured pistols (which impressed the girls very much) and held long possessions with priest Zych. On the night of March 4/5, all members of the organization were arrested.
Communist propaganda almost went mad with joy. The peaceful, rational position of Solidarity and the Episcopate was in sharp contrast with the lawlessness and cruelty of a military coup against one's own people!
More than two months have passed since the breakup of free unions and the introduction of martial law. Meanwhile, still none of the information distributed by the authorities about the armed seizure of power planned by Solidarity and a bloody settlement with the rulers has been confirmed. And finally the communists got their hands on evidence that libertarians are really trying to shed blood on their brothers. Well, they could also flaunt the fact that the first victim fell in their ranks.
When introducing martial law, Jaruzelski's team hoped to discover plans to overthrow the system by armed forces. The Insurgent Home Army delivered them to them ... (Archives of Mechanical Documentation, Military Photographic Agency, public domain).
In all media messages, the information was brought to the fore that the originator and the oldest member of the group was a student of the Catholic University of Lublin and an activist of the Independent Students' Association. The commander of the organization was, in turn, a Catholic priest, known for his anti-communist beliefs. Juvenile perpetrators who could arouse public sympathy were treated as secondary.
Such a message was obviously manipulation. None of the members of the organization belonged to Solidarity. Young conspirators, fascinated by the Polish Legions and Stones for the rampart , they only had heads full of romantic ideals and utopian plans to fight the regime.
The assassination of Sergeant Karos was not planned. The tragedy happened as a result of an accident and a panic attack. And Father Sylwester Zych was not any leader of the "gang". He learned about the boys' actions after the fact, during weekly meetings at the presbytery. Besides, there were no more than five of them! As Patryk Pleskot writes in his book "To kill. Political murders in the People's Republic of Poland ” :
The priest admitted that he did not believe in these boldest plans. He advised against returning internees , he warned against bloodshed, he tried to restrain "hot heads".
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Could Father Zych prevent the life tragedy of young people and the death of a private policeman? The question remains open.
Correctional Facility in Braniewo, where Father Zych was sent to prison. View from a pre-war postcard (source:public domain).
25 years in prison
The investigation was brutal. Suspects were beaten, humiliated, tortured and threatened. The court of the Warsaw Military District also had no mercy for, as it was put, members of the illegal armed union . Robert Chechłacz - the direct perpetrator of the death of Sergeant Karos - was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He only avoided the death penalty because he was underage. Accompanying him, Tomasz Łupanow, was sent to 13 years in prison, and Stanisław was Student Matejczuk - 6.
Father Zych was sentenced to 4 years in prison for belonging to an illegal armed organization and storing weapons without a permit. The Supreme Court changed the sentence to 6 years. The remaining people were sentenced to shorter or suspended sentences. However, all the punished left prison after a few years, even before the fall of communism.
We won't forgive you this Karos
Already during his stay in the prison, the officers and prison guards directly announced to Father Zych that would be murdered after his release. Not right away, as it would be too obvious, but after some time. In 1986, after 4 years in prison, he was subjected to an amnesty and released from prison.
From the very first moments in the wild, he was bombarded with anonymous letters and threatening calls. No wonder that after just 3 days, a nearly 37-year-old man recorded his will on a tape recorder:
I feel like my day is approaching. (...) I fought as best I could, I fought to the end, I was in prison, but I think that Poland needs to be given more, you have to give yourself to the end - like Fr. Jerzy [Popiełuszko].
The terrifying last will of Father Zych was written on this type of equipment. The photo shows the MK2500 tape recorder (photo:psm93 - oldradio.pl, license CC BY 2.5).
In February 1989, after two mysterious deaths (most likely murders) of priests Niedzielak and Suchowolec, Father Sylwester Zych could only mumble to himself: Now the officers will take care of me.
Father Zych ended his life in mysterious circumstances in Krynica Morska. In the photo, the church of st. Peter the Apostle and St. Francis (photo:Ludwig Schneider, license CC BY-SA 3.0).
At the end of March, he was attacked in Warsaw by three unknown perpetrators who tried to force him to pour vodka down his throat. A random woman scared the attackers away.
On July 11, 1989 (after the Round Table talks and the first partially free elections on June 4), the body of the priest was found at the PKS bus station in Krynica Morska. Officially, the cause of death was ethanol poisoning - he had more than 4 parts per mille in his blood. However, the priest was known to be averse to alcohol.
Only during the second autopsy did the specialists count as many as 54 injuries, including numerous stripes on the back of the head, possibly traces of truncheons. The mystery of Father Sylwester Zych's death has never been solved.
Robert Chechłacz and Stanisław Matejczuk emigrated from the country fearing that even in free Poland they might face the same fate as their priest friend.