There is no smoke without fire..., but perhaps it is not that fire, and the smoke is untrue...
I am the subject of a defamatory rumor which—as is the way with rumors—grows as it spreads, and it has now become virtually impossible to determine what it contains beyond its clear intention to slander.
As a man who has undoubtedly rendered distinguished service, since, with regard to wartime, I have a verified period of almost two and a half years of activity in the resistance movement and in the Polish People's Army, as well as such wartime decorations as the Partisan Cross, the Home Army Cross, the Commemorative Badge “Operation Tempest,” the Medal of Victory and Freedom, the Grunwald Badge, and, secondly, for my extensive social activity after the war: the Gold Cross, the Gold Badge of the Association of Polish Lawyers, the Gold Badge of Merit for Lower Silesia, the Silver Badge of the Polish Economic Society, the title of Honorary Member of the Society of Bolesławiec Enthusiasts, the Badge of Merit for the City of Bolesławiec, and others; since for many years I had the honor of leading local lawyers and economists as president of the ZPP Circle and president of the PTE Circle, I can not only not afford to disregard this rumor, but am positively obliged to defend my good name publicly.
Therefore, first and foremost, I clarify that I deserve neither the questioning of my merits nor any condemnation, and that what is causing such a sensation is as follows.
I am the son of a Poznań native—a Silesian Uprising participant, social activist and plebiscite campaigner in Silesia—who, among other things, had earlier, in 1910, taken part in collecting handfuls of soil from various parts of Silesia (perhaps from Bolesławiec as well?!) and, as part of the “Grunwald Celebrations,” carried that soil in a demonstrative procession, together with two fellow members of the “Sokół” nest from Biskupice, on three wheelbarrows across two borders to the Grunwald Mound in Niepołomice near Kraków.
During the Nazi occupation, living in Ostrzeszów, in the then Kępno County, which had been incorporated into Germany, and thus in a different territory, he managed to avoid being exposed by the Germans. But I, here, amid a dramatic convergence of various disastrous circumstances over which I had no influence, and whose description would require a book (I write about it in my memoirs), among which my mother’s partly German origin was decisive, was entered, without my knowledge and against my will, as a boy, on the so-called German national list (Volksliste), and then, despite the Germans having recorded my refusal to accept a German identity document, was forcibly drafted—under pressure to which I was unable to resist—into a Wehrmacht railway engineering unit. After a short time, in contact with an underground organization in Warsaw and with my father’s help, I feigned “disappearance” to prevent reprisals against my family and fled to Warsaw at the turn of 1942/43, from where I joined the Home Army’s activities in Mińsk Mazowiecki. I changed my surname and permanent registered address twice. I ended the war in the so-called Polish People’s Army.
I do not know what grounds there could be for making any accusation against me based on that period. I would very much like to meet the author of the slanders concerning me, who, with extraordinary persistence, fishes this tragic episode—never concealed in my biography in any case—for which I am not responsible, out of my life story, adding the appropriate flavor to discredit me in the eyes of the public.
I emphasize: I did for Poland what I was capable of doing. I can provide documentation. Perhaps this statement of mine will satisfy the gossipmongers’ curiosity. I return the bruderschaft to some and propose renewing it with others. I will be available at “Arietta” on June 15 at 4:00 p.m.
Finally, I thank those people who have not lost faith in me.
Bogdan Władysław Czyżewski
lawyer and economist
legal counsel