One of the most controversial politicians in the history of Poland, for his life choices, he paid a price far exceeding the criticism or even the contempt of his own nation and hosts of historians and journalists. Many people believe that the kidnapping and murder of his son was not an accident or a crime committed in order to obtain a ransom. And it's hard for them to be surprised. The case of Bohdan Piasecki's death is full of ideological, national and political threads - including international ones - but to this day we do not know anything for sure about the people responsible for the murder of the teenager. The murder - let us add - considered by some to be… ritualistic.
Bolesław Piasecki, because we are talking about him, was not an ordinary politician. He is a man torn by extremes and contradictions, and it seems that only he was the only one who knew how to deal with the joining of what was mutually exclusive. Before the war, he belonged to the group of the most influential "young" nationalists, i.e. the group that entered the political life of authoritarian Poland in the 1930s and was very different from the more moderate, but also rational "old ones". The new generation was characterized by fanaticism and radicalism concerning, inter alia, attitude towards Polish citizens of Jewish origin, and one of the fundamentalist organizations of dissenters who distanced themselves from the mainstream of the National Democratic Party - the "Falanga" National-Radical Movement - was led by Bolesław Piasecki, whose supporters - from the leader's initials - were called "bepists". For his commitment, the then almost 20-year-old radical was sent to the Sanacja isolation camp in Bereza Kartuska for several months.
At the beginning of World War II, Piasecki fell into the hands of the Gestapo, but he was saved from imprisonment or even death by the intervention of an influential Italian family - he was released. In turn, the political milieu of "Falanga" created its own partisan organization and clashed with both the Germans and the Soviet troops. At one point, the Confederation of the Nation was even incorporated into the structures of the Home Army. However, the time of the occupation also brought personal suffering to Piasecki: he lost his wife and brother during the Warsaw Uprising.
But the moment of the most difficult choices was yet to come. While Bolesław Piasecki, who also fought with the Soviet partisans during the war, once avoided being arrested by the NKVD, in 1945 he had no luck and found himself in the hands of the Stalinist executioner - General Ivan Serov, a man responsible for the Katyn massacre and the arrest of 16 leaders of the Polish State Underground, and after the war, the head of the entire KGB and military suppressing the uprising in Hungary in 1956 (Serov's list of crimes is much longer, however). We do not know the details of the "meeting" and we do not know what happened there, but Piasecki survived it safe. Moreover, he was soon released from prison and, with the consent of the communist authorities, he started political activity. This unexpected turn of events was most likely the result of presenting to the Soviet general the history of his own involvement, and above all the concept according to which Piasecki was ready to organize a Catholic-national movement in the new realities of supporting the "people's power" and its activities. This is how the "Pax" Association was created, which for most of its existence - after the initial moderate support from the Episcopate - disfavored by the hierarchs. The communists were different: for them, Piasecki's activities were entirely in their hands.
In Stalinist times, Bolesław Piasecki built his political and material position on the basis of "Catholic" and "national" institutions accepted by the communists (he was considered the richest citizen of the People's Republic of Poland for some time). All the time, however, this endocommunist had to participate in the backstage friction, especially since the time of the breakthrough after the death of the Soviet dictator threatened his position. This is why in 1956 he supported the faction of "hardline" communists ("Natolinians") and stood against an apparently reformist group of party and PRL activists, who were also involved in Stalinist crimes, but supported a certain change of course ("Puławian"). It is worth noting that many of the prominent representatives of the latter coterie were of Jewish origin.
And just then - when the political situation became extremely unstable, the party authorities were at odds, the new first secretary, Władysław Gomułka, although he enjoyed the support of the public, he could not be absolutely sure of his position in the ranks of the PZPR, the security apparatus was in disarray, and Piasecki, the influence of Moscow on the Vistula slightly weakened - on January 22, 1957 from the Liceum Ogólnokształcące pw. st. Augustine in Warsaw, the teenage Bohdan was kidnapped. The tragedy began, most likely very short for a teenager, and for his father - until he died in 1979. The politician has never forgiven himself for not saving his firstborn son from such a fate.
However, it was not immediately known what happened. Bohdan Piasecki was not pushed into a van with tinted windows and no one put a black bag on his head. Contrary. Around 1:45 pm a man approached a group of young men returning from school and asked which of them was called Piasecki. Then he presented the politician's son with a document or ID, and then the teenager calmly walked away with the stranger towards the waiting taxi. Most likely, there was another man standing by the vehicle, and the person of the driver aroused great interest in the investigators in the future.
The unusual event disturbed Bohdan's colleagues, who noted the taxi numbers and returned to school and informed the younger son of Piasecki - Jarosław. The latter soon went to his father, who passed the information on to the services and demanded that a search be started. Soon, however, between 15:15 and 15:45, one of the hijackers called the Lyceum and, introducing himself as an employee of the education department, asked if Bohdan was the son of Bolesław. The bandits had already made another phone call to the chairman of "Pax" and informed him that a letter was waiting for him at the Post Office No. 1 in Warsaw. From the text, the father learned about the kidnapping of his child and the method of handing over the ransom of 100,000. PLN and 4 thousand. dollars. It was then that a strange game began, which was most likely aimed at teasing the kidnappers of Bolesław Piasecki, humiliating him and causing him additional pain. Receiving calls and letters hidden in lockers and driving around Warsaw with strange objects (e.g. deer horns) and money took several days, while the investigators examining Bohdan's body discovered on December 8, 1958 stated that the young man was most likely murdered in the day of the kidnapping.
Before the remains of the politician's child were discovered, however, the search for the kidnapped teenager was carried out by the security authorities and by the president of Pax, acting on his own (and sometimes with greater efficiency). It was Bohdan's father who established that Ignacy Ekerling was the taxi driver carrying the hijackers. It soon turned out that this man was not absolutely accidental. On the contrary: he had some ties to groups that might have been interested in taking revenge on a once anti-Semitic activist. Piasecki himself spoke about political motives, and the Security Service focused its attention on those circles that might wish badly for the leader of "Pax". Former soldiers of the National Armed Forces, activists of pro-communist "Catholic" organizations with a doctrinal vision different from Piasecki, agents of foreign services, Bolesław himself who was to fake kidnapping in order to take his son abroad, but most of all people of Jewish origin, were taken into account. Ekerling the taxi driver belonged to the latter group. “A friend of his brother-in-law, Mieczysław Katz, a former driver of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party, was a criminal from Łódź, Michał Barkowski (aka Robert Kalman). It was the latter, together with the former security officer, Stefan Łazorczyk, that they most likely kidnapped from Bohdan's school. The crime scene was chosen by their friend, a policeman, Adam Kossowski, who kept operating apartments at 82A Świerczewskiego Street, wrote Piotr Zychowicz a few years ago in Rzeczpospolita. It was in the basement of this building, nearly 2 years after the kidnapping, that the plumbers became interested in the door with nails. After balancing them, they found the body with a knife stuck in its chest. The policemen, the boy's father and then the boy's dentist, had no doubts and recognized Bohdan without any problems.
Sometimes you can hear that the main goal of the perpetrators was to hurt the father. This is why it was decided not to hit Bolesław Piasecki himself, but his firstborn son. After all, for a parent, harming a child is incomparably greater suffering than any blows aimed at itself. In addition, the kidnappers-moderators "made it clear who killed the boy, giving the murder the nature of a ritual murder: a knife left in the body, mysterious signs burned inside the toilet," says Zychowicz.
And although this type of information is difficult to treat with absolute seriousness, and the so-called Jewish ritual murders are one of the most popular anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, it is possible that the attempt to stylize the crime in this way was aimed at an additional attack on Bolesław Piasecki. On the other hand, the theme of the perpetration of people of Jewish origin is considered by many historians as one of the most probable. All because of the anti-Semitic actions of the RNR "Falanga" led by Piasecki, including acts of a terrorist nature. As a result of one of such actions, a Jewish child died in 1937. In addition, during World War II, not only Germany, but also Soviet partisans, including Jews, were killed at the hands of the Cadre Shock Battalions subordinate to the Confederation of the People (although - as Kazimierz Krajewski, the author of the work on UBK believes - the reason for their deaths was not their nationality, and belonging to communist bands). It is worth remembering that after 1945 a large group of fighters of this type of "red" units formed the foundations of the terror apparatus of "People's Poland". Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that it was these people who decided to hit Piasecki at the moment of his weakness.
- These people waited for a reason until 1957. Previously, they believed that Piasecki was beyond their reach, that he had such strong support in Moscow. After 1956, they felt that these ties had weakened. It was also a time when Piasecki seemed to lose control of PAX. The murderers decided to finish him off, believes the historian prof. Jan Żaryn.
When analyzing the possible motive of revenge for Piasecki's anti-Semitic deeds and views, it is also impossible to ignore the fact that several people related to the case and who could - at least - help in determining the perpetrators, and even among the suspects themselves, left the country shortly after Bohdan's kidnapping , mainly to Israel. It even made it impossible to hear them as witnesses. Meanwhile, many of them had interconnectedness. The only one who did not manage to leave Poland was the taxi driver Ignacy Ekerling. This attempt was blocked - through his political contacts - by Bolesław Piasecki. However, when, after the boy's body had been found, charges were brought against the driver, as a result of political pressure from the PRL authorities - perhaps even Władysław Gomułka himself - the indictment was withdrawn. The reason for such a reaction was probably the reluctance to escalate anti-Semitic moods in Poland, and in addition, the Jewish community at home and abroad argued that a possible Ekerling trial would be a manifestation of anti-Semitism. In the end, the taxi driver never stood trial, despite the fact that, as Peter Raina, a Polish historian of Indian origin, who thoroughly investigated the case, notes that some of the driver's testimonies were contradictory to what other witnesses said, the taxi driver missed the truth about driving on the day of the hijacking of this vehicle after for the first time, and the route he chose was very unusual, but it avoided traffic lights and police stations.
An interesting clue in the case can be found in an article published in 1966 by one of the largest Israeli newspapers. "Ma'ariw" informed that "the murderers of a Polish politician's son live in Israel", and the murder of a teenager was called "political murder", which - in accordance with local law - excluded the possibility of surrendering the perpetrators of the crime to the Polish People's Republic. In addition, it was this newspaper that pointed to the guilt of Bolesław Piasecki: anti-Semitic acts before and during the war (today we know that if Jews died at the hands of partisan units of a nationalist, the reason was their communism, not nationality, and representatives of this ethnic group can also be found in him Shock Cadre Battalions).
In addition, the attitude of law enforcement agencies raises many questions - experienced officers committed numerous, and school-like, compromising errors in the case, which raises suspicions that the perpetrators were concealed by the security apparatus of the People's Republic of Poland. Undoubtedly, some "safers" may have been involved in the murder of Bohdan Piasecki. On the other hand, however, it is worth remembering that the uniformed services of "People's Poland" were then engulfed in chaos, and the officers acted in this case under enormous pressure, which meant that they focused on quantity, not quality - during the investigation closed only in 1982, a sea of materials, and on the list of people interviewed, overheard or otherwise checked, we will find over 160,000 names.
The mishaps and mistakes of the services somehow confirm the thesis about the revenge of Jewish security service officers for Piasecki's anti-Semitic views and actions (which was tried to conceal through numerous "mistakes"), while involvement in finding the truth - on the contrary, indicates a great determination and willingness to explain the mysterious death, and the abandonment of the trial of the only man who could lead the investigators to unravel a complex case is quite obvious in the context of the PRL authorities' concerns about the destabilization of the state as a result of radicalization of moods and a potential threat in foreign policy. It is also worth adding that in addition to standard activities - although carried out on an unprecedented scale, because everyone and everything was checked with the help of interrogations, wiretaps and expert analyzes - the security police, after finding Bohdan Piasecki's body, decided to take an unprecedented step: publishing on the radio and television the recordings of the hijackers' voices, registered while calling the boss of "Pax". The highest authorities of the People's Republic of Poland gave their consent for the "Antenna" campaign, but this also did not help to apprehend or at least identify the criminals. Some of the people reporting to the militia, having listened to the recordings, made jokes, took revenge on unfaithful husbands / wives or were mentally disturbed. However, most of the leads were checked by the officers. Unfortunately, this in no way brought them closer to knowing the truth.....
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