Life was poor in the People's Republic of Poland. Ordinary citizens struggled with a shortage of literally everything. Meanwhile, the gold rush continued at its best in the highest echelons of power. Party officials believed that thanks to the stolen "enemies of the system" they would manage to maintain communism, and they themselves would bask in wealth. However, when the "Iron" scandal was revealed, their faces fell ...
It all started with Nazi gold. Legends about Nazi hiding places hidden in various places in Lower Silesia, filled with gold, money, jewelry and works of art, from mid-1945 fired the imaginations of both gray citizens and members of the communist elite.
Some of the treasures were appropriated by Edward Gierek and his wife. Illustrative photo:The visit of the American presidential couple in Warsaw (December 1977)
Security very quickly discovered the treasures that the Germans were supposed to hide in the Breslau fortress. Shortly after the war, an intensive search for the lost Nazi property began. The stakes were high - it was about several dozen tons of gold from the Wrocław treasury, as well as other riches left in the Recovered Territories by their former inhabitants.
Gold for the bold
There was no shortage of people willing to get rich on the post-war spoils, but when the following leads turned out to be wrong, party officials began to look for sources of additional income elsewhere. Among them stood out Ryszard Matejewski, deputy director of the Investigative Department of the Ministry of Public Security, head of the 2nd Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (counterintelligence) and director general for SB in the ministry. As described in the book Hitler's Lost Gold , which has just been released by the Znak Horyzont publishing house, Tomasz Bonek:
His eyes were always glowing at the thought of gold. After all, the country was still very poor. Now he had the opportunity to pursue his search. And that power corrupts, we know perfectly well from history and literature. Matejewski was tempted too. He craved gold and jewelry from all possible sources. He would not despise German treasures.
From the 1960s to 1971, a group of robbery officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs led by Matejewski carried out a secret operation in the West and illegally obtained foreign currency and gold - they stole, armed robberies, intimidated, and maybe even committed more terrible crimes.
Officially, the money was supposed to go to intelligence and counterintelligence, but in reality, ministry employees "borrowed" jewelry, dollars, German marks and pounds sterling, and then sold them. For the money obtained in this way, they secured a bit of luxury in the crude communist reality. Their shopping list included, among others TV sets, coffee and canned ham from Pewex or exclusive cosmetics.
Slack "Iron" while it's hot!
In the end they fell - thanks to the denunciations of "kind" colleagues, who also participated in the practice, but (in their own opinion) earned too little on it. When the case got loud, the officers of the Ministry of the Interior in panic hid some of the looted properties in their allotments on the Zegrze Reservoir (hence the code name of the whole scandal - "Zalew"). But it was to no avail. Tomasz Bonek in the book Hitler's Lost Gold computes:
36 people were arrested, several were sentenced, including Ryszard Matejewski, to 12 years' imprisonment. In their homes, investigators found 82 kilograms of gold, over 150,000. American dollars and PLN 5 million. The whole is worth PLN 40 million.
The remaining employees of the "Treasury Ministry" received sentences ranging from 2 years and 6 months to 9 years in prison. You might think that such judgments would be preventive. But no, they did not scare those willing to make easy earnings in the least. Another scandal broke out in the mid-1980s - this time dubbed the "Iron" scandal.
Again, it was about illegal fundraising - allegedly for intelligence operations, and in fact - for high-ranking officials of the Ministry of the Interior to ensure a comfortable life in the Polish People's Republic. For this "noble" purpose, the gangsters involved in the action were ready to go to any lengths. Even to murder (although they maintained that the deaths were unintentional).
Mirosław Milewski
As calculated, the ministerial loot included one hundred kilograms of gold (mostly jewelry), lots of gemstones, luxury clothing, lighters, and several hundred containers of silver. Mirosław Milewski, who headed the 1st Department of the Ministry of the Interior at the time, later explained bluntly:
It was an unusual operation, an operation in which it stank. Hence, it was necessary to have the consent of a certain higher level.
Generally, I do not remember that apart from some specific matters, operations, the secretary of the Central Committee or the prime minister would approve of anything. So apparently the matter was considered to be of this scale, importance. This was due to the fact that at that time the demand for money was great and hence people looked for all kinds of methods.
From his testimony it appeared that some of the treasures obtained through criminal activity were appropriated by representatives of the highest authorities:Edward Gierek, his wife Stanisława, Jan Szydlak, Zdzisław Grudzień and others. A lot of loot was also sold in a secret shop operating in the ministry building in the 1970s, ordinary employees who received stolen jewelry and other valuables as a bonus. Ultimately, the criminal activity of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was curtailed and Mirosław Milewski was removed from the Political Bureau of the Central Committee.
PRL - People's Criminal Republic
The "Zalew" and "Żelazo" scandals - although undoubtedly the loudest - were by no means the only cases of abuse during the communist era. In People's Poland, economic crimes were commonplace. Moreover, also the poverty-stricken gray citizens were not saints, although in their case it is probably easier to understand the motives of the criminal behavior. Mirosław Romański concludes:
The phenomenon of scandals, abuses, economic crimes visible in social life throughout the entire period of the Polish People's Republic existed on practically every level. It included many people from all walks of life - from leading state decision makers, to local leaders, factory heads, cooperative CEOs, and people who were not affiliated with the party in any way.
For those in power, the position allowed them to get things done, so they used it more or less cleverly, often exposing themselves to the law. On the other hand, for ordinary citizens, who had a hard time living in the People's Republic of Poland, the possibility of additional income was most desirable . Hence the growing speculation, foreign exchange trading, and the importation of material goods from the West.
The scale of the phenomenon is best evidenced by the fact that, according to the official data of the General Prosecutor's Office, only in 1980 as many as about a thousand indictments brought to the courts concerned various types of economic scandals. They covered 3,400 people, one third of whom held high managerial positions.
In 491 cases, the defendants were suspected of seizing property worth over PLN 200,000, 51 cases concerned bribery over PLN 100,000, and 159 - the so-called mismanagement. In the following year, investigations were conducted against four ministers, seven deputy ministers and seven secretaries of the Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party.
As you can see Gomułka, who back in the 1960s (on the occasion of the meat scandal, in connection with which over 400 people were arrested) claimed that "you just need to hang a few swindlers and there will be order" , he miscalculated heavily…