Agnieszka Cahn

Clare Hall

A Critical Analysis of Adam Doboszyński’s March on Myślenice in 1936

2011

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The dissertation does not exceed the word limit for the respective Degree Committee.

The dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing, which is the

outcome of work done in collaboration except where specifically indicated in the text.

Agnieszka Cahn

20 June 2011

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank CJCR for the financial support I have received throughout

the course of my studies.

I am particularly grateful to Dr. Lars Fischer for teaching me how to make

sense of history and how to see the untold even behind the supposedly clear

evidence of documents and archival materials.

I would also wish to express my thanks to my supervisor Dr. Francois Guesnet

for extremely useful initial discussions which guided me in the right direction as well

as for meticulously detailed comments on my thesis.

Last, but not least, I thank my husband Martin for all his moral support and my

children for their patience.

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I. Introduction 1.1 Myślenice: from 2005 to 1936

II. Historical Background 2.1 Sources and Methodology

2.2 The Polish Political Scene between the Wars

2.3 Catholic – Jewish Relations and the Question of Victimhood

III. 24 June 1936 3.1 Protection Squadrons

3.2 The Putsch

3.3 A Failed Revolution

IV. “Act of Higher Necessity”, Pogrom, March or Anti-Government Rebellion? 4.1 Doboszyński – A Revolutionary Firebrand (Sanacja’s Media Event)

4.2 Doboszyński – A Leader of Great Poland (Nationalist Power Demonstration)

4.3 Doboszyński – An Antisemite (Jewish Furore)

4.4 Doboszyński – A Messiah for Poland (Adam’s Performance)

V. Conclusions Annex

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Abstract

This study investigates Doboszynski’s March on Myślenice on 23rd June

1936. Adam Doboszynski, a local leader of the right wing Stronnictwo Narodowe,

created a small private army and attacked local Jewish shops, their owners’ families

and representatives of the state. This event gave rise to a series of high profile court

cases used by Doboszynski and his political associates to launch one of the biggest

anti-Jewish campaigns in interwar Poland. The impact on the local Jewish residents

was largely ignored in the court cases.

Doboszynski returned to Poland after the War and was arrested and executed

by the communist authorities, thus achieving martyr status in post-communist Poland.

The study uses archival records of the original court cases, contemporary

newspaper reports and interviews with surviving witnesses to reappraise the event

and in particular the way it has been viewed by the interested parties.

The event is analysed from the point of view of four different interests: the

Sanacja Government, Stronnictwo Narodowe, Adam Doboszynski himself and the

Jewish community. At the time it was to the advantage of all four interests to

emphasise the event’s importance, but it was the conflict between Sanacja and

Stronnictwo Narodowe which dominated and which Adam Doboszynski used as a

tool for promoting his own antisemitic political views. In post-communist Poland

analysis of the March has almost exclusively been carried out by nationalist

historians who tend to uncritically accept the views of Doboszynski himself and

minimise the impact on the Jewish residents. Examination of the original records

highlights the significance of that impact and emphasizes how the voices of the

original Jewish victims have not been heard.

Historians wanting a fuller understanding of the event must leave behind the

official story which can only so easily find confirmation in documents and start

searching for the untold.

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I. Introduction

1.1 Myślenice: from 2005 to 1936

At the beginning of June 2005 the local authorities of Myślenice, a small Polish

town located thirty kilometres south of Kraków, received an official letter from a

regional wing of Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny (ONR), a neo-fascist youth organization.

The letter had been signed by the head of the group, Tomasz Piasecki.1 As an

organizer of a public event Piasecki asked the permission of the Mayor of Myślenice

to demonstrate on the town’s Market Square “in honour of Adam Doboszyński”.2

Sixty nine years earlier, on 23 June 1936, Doboszyński (1904-1949), a young

activist from the opposition to the Sanacja3 government and land owner of a small

estate situated near Myślenice, organised a paramilitary attack on the town’s Jewish

community. Wielka Encyklopedia PWN mentions that an armed gang of Stronnictwo

Narodowe (SN) led by Adam Doboszyński attacked Myślenice on the night of 22/23

June 1936 shouting antisemitic slogans. “The attackers wrecked the local station of

State Police, the Starosta’s (head of the District) flat, and a couple of Jewish shops,

having done which, they withdrew into the forest, where after a few days they were

ambushed by the police”.4

The relatively quick reaction of the police forces which led to the arrest of

Doboszyński was followed by the highest profile series of political trials5 in the history

of Interwar Poland accompanied by a phenomenon which can only be described as a

“media war”. The event has taken on historical significance as a symbol of Polish

antisemitism of the 1930’s, even though many Polish historians referred to it as

1 Pseudonym commemorating Bolesław Piasecki (1915-1979), leader of ONR-

Falanga. 2 Olszewski 2005a. 3 Political movement in power in Poland from Piłsudski’s coup d’état in May 1926 until

September 1939. 4 Wojnowski 2003, p252. 5 June 1937 – Kraków, February 1938 - Lwów, June-November 1938 - High Court

Appeals.

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“economic” antisemitism.6 Perhaps therefore - the young radicals coming to

Myślenice half a century later felt justified in commemorating and praising it.

Every summer since the early 1980s ONR had gathered in Myślenice at the

Zarabie leisure area beyond the River Raba to participate in special training

workshops and “to restore their pride in Polish history”. For years they had not

attracted much public attention. In 2003, however, journalists of a popular Polish

weekly Wprost, not only counted Myślenice among the favourite meeting points of

Polish White Power7, but also gave a quite terrifying account of those meetings, e.g.

reporting that the shooting targets used during military training were silhouettes of

Orthodox Jews, both adults and children. The article caused discussions among the

town’s citizens. Some claimed that Doboszyński was a fascist and his attack on

Myślenice Jews revealed it clearly, others argued that such actions were necessary

for the economic survival of Catholic Poles and that ONR should not be considered

fascist, neither before the war, nor in 2003.8

Two years later the Mayor received Piasecki’s letter and gave ONR

permission to demonstrate. Within a week, for the second time in its history,

Myślenice became a centre of attention for the Polish media. Gazeta Wyborcza, the

most influential Polish daily, called the town a place of particular national dishonour

for Poles9 and ran a series of articles focusing on the Interwar “brown” movements,

such as ONR. Gazeta Wyborcza triggered a more general fascism-related

discussion. Journalists interviewed historians and asked for their comments. Many,

like Jacek Majchrowski, pointed out that Polish prewar nationalism, unlike German or

Italian, was free from a racial background.10 This argument has been commonly used

by all historians who reject any affiliation between Polish nationalism and fascism.

They explain that German or Italian Nazis placed the “nation” at the top of their neo-

pagan value ladder, while the Catholic Poles reserved the highest point of their 6 Wapiński 1980, Majchrowski 1986. 7“A “national radical picnic” is organised there every June on the anniversary of the

1936 Myślenice pogrom, when Adam Doboszyński’s paramilitary group attacked

Jewish shops and public buildings” (Pawelczyk, Kudzia 2003). 8 Interview 3. 9 Olszewski, Grzebałkowska 2005. 10 Olszewski 2005b.

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system for a metaphysical absolute - God.11 What would be the practical results of

this difference and, more particularly, what would be the difference in their attitude

towards Jews, has rarely been the subject of analysis.

I remember the moment when I became interested in the Doboszyński case

and in the way it has been presented by modern historians. It happened in the middle

of the 2005 media campaign. I read extensively on the 1936 events in Myślenice and

the court trials that followed and I was surprised by the one-sidedness of most of the

interpretations. The Jewish side of the story had either been misunderstood and

simplified or was entirely missing. Searching for it made me realise that there were

other pieces also missing from the puzzle and that a better understanding of what

happened in Myślenice in 1936 could be crucial to a better understanding of the

history of Poland between the wars. There was much more to Doboszyński’s action

than an anti-Sanacja demonstration or a simple anti-Jewish raid. The event was

multifaceted and should not be explained in a simplified manner.

In my dissertation I try to answer the following questions: why the events

remembered in Polish history as a local, brief action by an individual of limited

importance12 in which “nobody was killed”13 were at the time they happened

internationally famous; why the court trial of the main defendant attracted the daily

attention of all Polish and a significant number of international media14; why, although

he accepted responsibility for an obviously criminal action, it proved almost

impossible to sentence him15 and required major changes in the state legal system

11 Meller, Tomaszewski 2011, p31, cf Grott 2005, p357. 12 In June 1936 Doboszyński was just a minor author discussed in nationalist circles,

on leave from his position as head of an SN branch near Kraków. 13 Historians underlined that Doboszyński’s action posed no physical threat to

Myślenice citizens (e.g. Baliszewski 2009). Its life endangering aspect was not raised

as an issue in any of his trials. 14 Among 40 journalists accredited as trial observers there were Czech reporters

from Národní výzva, as well as Palestine Jews from Davar and Haaretz. 15 Both in Kraków and Lwów the jurors wanted to free him but the judges prevented

this. However, it is known that some jurors and judges in Lwów received anonymous

threats. Following a complicated appeal process, he was sentenced by Tribunal to

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and why the town he attacked became a symbol of Polish nationalism for many years

to come. I will also briefly comment on how Polish communist historiography

influenced the way Adam Doboszyński’s action in Myślenice has been viewed.

I hope that my analysis of this particular event can add to existing knowledge

of the nature of Polish right wing politics between the wars and of the changes

happening at that time within different political groups of the Right. It may also help to

better explain Jewish-Christian relations in the interwar period.

3.5 years after jury trials were abolished by a parliamentary decision sometimes

referred to as Lex Doboszyński (Nitschke 1993, p105, Żaryn 1993, p111).

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II. Historical background 2.1 Sources and methodology

The core of primary literature used in my dissertation consists of the legal

documents from the court trials of Adam Doboszyński and the 47 members of his

squad who were also tried. While studying these archival documents I paid special

attention to the statements given by Jewish witnesses because they were almost

totally neglected by my predecessors. The Jewish side of the conflict had not been

taken into account by the researchers. A monograph by Kaczmarski and Tomasik

published in 2010 during my research included two short fragments of statements by

Jewish victims of the attack.16 Although not followed by any comment, these,

together with two articles by Jewish journalists published at the time of the attack,

comprise the first voices of Jews noted by historians. This previous neglect was

facilitated by discussing the Myślenice events as part of prewar Polish-Jewish

conflict, a dichotomy which in itself incorporates certain political and sociological

preconceptions. I specifically chose to rather talk about Catholic-Jewish relations, as

all the Jews involved in the case were, and considered themselves, Polish citizens.

To establish the arguments of all sides of the conflict I have used articles and

commentaries published by the media during the Kraków and Lwów trials. I looked

both at those papers very much involved on a particular side of the debate (Nowy

Dziennik, Naje Folkscajtung, Warszawski Dziennik Narodowy, Prosto z Mostu, Bunt

Młodych, Robotnik) and those trying, rather unsuccessfully, to report the case without

taking sides (Czas, Goniec Częstochowski, Gazeta Lwowska, Gazeta Polska,

Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny).

I studied the private letters of Doboszyński and his publications: his only novel,

his studies, essays, poems and prayers.

All the interviews I made were carried out as informal discussions. I contacted

Holocaust survivors from Myślenice, witnesses of the attack found from local

sources, family members of those who took part in the attack and Adam

Doboszyński’s nephew, himself a retired historian, who lives in Edinburgh.

16 Kaczmarski, Tomasik 2010, p105, 127.

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I treated most of the materials from the years 1936-1939 including all the

memories concerning that time as primary sources although of course many of them,

those not based on direct knowledge of the events but interpreting and analysing

other sources, are of a secondary character. What was a secondary source in 1936

was a primary source for me as my interest lay not only in what happened, but also in

how it was interpreted. For practical reasons I divided all the primary sources I used

into four groups in relation to their origins, the interests they represented and the

position they took in the Doboszyński debate. I called these groups accordingly:

Sanacja, National Camp, Jews and Doboszyński.

Although there are numerous secondary sources available relating to the

general historical background: Poland between the wars, contemporary Polish

political parties, ideologies and movements, the secondary literature on the

Myślenice case has been extremely limited. Doboszyński’s trials in the 1930s

attracted unprecedented attention, hence his action found its way into historical

works dealing with interwar Poland. However, in the majority of cases, it has hardly

been more than mentioned. In 1947 Doboszyński smuggled himself from London to

Poland and was arrested, tried and executed as a German and American spy after a

Stalinist show trial. Therefore, his action in 1936 was not supposed to be discussed

beyond the only official interpretation it received.17 Even those historians who wrote

freely outside Poland did not dedicate more than a couple of sentences to

Doboszyński. They saw him as a politician of rather marginal importance and

categorised his action as yet another pogrom, a signum temporis of growing

antisemitism caused by economic crises and the influence of Nazi ideology. Adam

Pragier, a Polish economist and member of PPS (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna), who

published his memoirs in London in 1966, described him as a “hot head” who was

never taken seriously in politics.18

17 Which stated that “an imperialist agent and traitor of the Polish nation Doboszyński

organised the Myślenice putsch to spread fascist ideology”. The communists noted

the general antisemitic aspects of Myślenice but, like all the prewar trials, ignored the

particular voices of Jewish victims. It seemed that Doboszyński’s antisemitism was

much less important to this court than his anti-communism. 18 “Doboszyński was not a serious politician and as a private individual he was not

completely sane either” (Pragier 1966, p691).

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Two documentary programmes about Doboszyński prepared by Polish

Television in 1993 and 2006 rather than properly analysing the importance of

Myślenice for interwar Poland, diminished it. “When truth is not accessible, it is often

replaced by legend”, said Dariusz Baliszewski19 at the beginning of the 2006 feature.

In the opinion of most historians interviewed by Baliszewski, Myślenice, which

“became a black legend in communist propaganda”, was in fact an event of little

significance in prewar politics. “The entire hustle took an hour, a couple of shop

windows got smashed, nothing much happened there” – argued in unison those who

condemned and those who defended Doboszyński.

At the same time there continued to be a group of historians whose interest in

Doboszyński, his life, ideas and performances, never ceased. These were people

linked with ONR and Polish extreme nationalism. They have kept writing about the

Raid on Myślenice, and explaining Doboszyński’s reasons behind it. In the words of

Mieczysław Harusewicz20, Myślenice should be understood as a “justifiable

punishment expedition” organised by a “fully responsible” individual. Doboszyński,

“an absolutely unusual phenomenon” in the history of Poland, had been “courageous

enough” to bring “freedom and justice” to Myślenice. Poland was so “disgustingly

corrupted” at all levels of state administration that invading towns and “spanking

Starostas” was SN’s only choice. If Myślenice happened only in Myślenice, it was

because “unfortunately there were no other Doboszyńskis”.21

With the final fall of communism in 1989, Adam Doboszyński’s conviction22

was quashed and his record could again be freely discussed. The interest in

Doboszyński grew significantly, especially among the young generation of historians.

The last five years have brought several scholarly articles and two more significant

books related to his life and political ideas. Still this is not enough, particularly in the

case of the Myślenice event which has been continuously presented in a simplified,

one-sided manner as a dramatic protest against unjust economic relations within

19 A historian, journalist and writer specializing in XX century. 20 Prewar member of Młodzież Wszechpolska and ONR, together with Doboszyński

active among Polish radical nationalists in London, opposed to Sikorski’s

government. 21 Harusewicz 1984, p1-3. 22 From 1949.

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prewar Poland, a protest for which Doboszyński was punished both before and

after23 the war.

In the 1930s the debate on Doboszyński’s case had four “sides”, each

representing its own interest and using its own arguments. Only one of these four

“sides” has been preserved in Polish history.

2.2 The Polish Political Scene between the Wars

Studying the media debate surrounding the “Myślenice Trials” one can easily

notice that the traditional socialist and nationalist sides of the Polish political scene

had changed some of their distinctive features. Left-and-right wing journalists used

quite confusing vocabulary when the accusations of fascism, communism or lack of

patriotism could come from all sides alike. Without knowing the name of the paper

from which a particular cutting commenting on the case came, it would be difficult to

judge which political side the author supported.

Adam Doboszyński had been considered a politician of the Polish far right. If

communism was to represent the ultimate incarnation of an ideology of the left,

Doboszyński would certainly view himself as standing on the exactly opposite pole.

Yet, when one reads his ideological creed “National Economy”, first published in

1934, it is impossible not to note that he places himself in many ways on the side of

the traditional left in his criticism of the existing system. Seeing the situation in Poland

as a fight between “anonymous capital”, which he identified with the state (linked to it

by thousands of threads such as “powerful speculators” or “an army of state officials”)

and the “masses of proletariat”, which were “totally dependent on speculators” and

deprived of their future, he stood on the side of the weak and against the forces and

groups in power. Although he explained that his position and system were not rooted

in socialism but in the “eternal teaching of the Catholic Church”,24 replacing the

traditional opposition: communism versus capitalism with the new one: capitalism

(equals communism) versus nationalism could still lead to confusion. Traditionally the

political right grew out of conservatism rather than revolutionary ideas, even if of

23 See p28. 24 He also considered Hitler’s economic theory as rooted in Christian rather than

socialist origins.

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religious provenance. Doboszyński, however, was not the only right wing ideologist

of that time calling for radical changes and promoting military forms of religiosity. With

all his specific features he was part of a wider trend of merging socialism and

nationalism which resulted in the appearance of movements such as Fascism in Italy

or National Socialism in Germany.25

The left wing roots of the modern right are being noted by an increasing

number of scholars.26 Brian Porter, a leading historian of the evolution of Polish

nationalism, showed through a very detailed analysis how the economic problems of

the fin de dix-neuvième siècle gave birth to the authoritarianism of Doboszyński’s

party, Endecja27 (later SN). A call to improve the economic situation of the Polish

people through certain organised actions had to be pronounced by any political

movement appearing at the end of 19th century. That was why the two main political

groupings formed in Poland at that time: “socialists”, concentrated around PPS, and

“nationalists”, brought together through organisational work among students (Zets)28

and peasants (Polak)29, started from almost the same position. During the last

decade of the old century Roman Dmowski (1864-1939), the spiritual father of all

Polish nationalists, still praised the socialist movement as an extremely important

expression of the aspirations of the working class, who “thanks to its numbers and

possibilities of development should be considered an excellent source of national

power”30. Only a couple of years later he backed away from these revolutionary

positions having decided that the obligation towards the nation overrides all social

needs and his group became the deadly enemy of PPS.

Before Adam Doboszyński entered the Polish political scene, Dmowski’s

nationalists had already been called “the old ones” as they returned to more

traditional conservative positions. After May 1926 and the success of Piłsudski’s coup

25 Sternhell, Sznajder, Asheri 1994, Hagen 1996, Besier, Stokłosa 2009. 26 e.g. Porter 2000, Krzywiec 2009, Meller, Tomaszewski 2011. 27 Porter 2000, p257. 28 Związek Młodzieży Polskiej, a secret association of Polish students which had

active branches at Universities and High Schools in all three parts of Poland. 29 A monthly magazine edited in Krakow from 1896 by J.L. Popławski with the aim of

strengthening national identity among Polish peasants on Russian territory. 30 Dmowski 1893.

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d’état, they were criticised by the younger generations for the weakness of their

traditional political methods. With the economic crises of the 1930s deepening, right

wing youth radicalised further and again called for revolutionary deeds.

Polish socialists had to be “patriotic” even more than Polish nationalists

needed to be revolutionary. This was a special feature of the Polish political scene of

the time caused by historical circumstances and was similarly confusing as “right”

rooted in the “left”.

At the turn of the century when “modernity” started challenging the “old”

political order of XIX century Europe, Poland did not exist. For over a hundred years

it had been divided between three occupying powers with different political, social

and economic frameworks existing for Poles in each of them. Like every nation

deprived of its statehood, the Polish people had to preserve their national identity in

order to survive. Polishness thus became a real obsession of most Poles, an

obsession which found its extreme in a romantic messianic concept interpreting

Poland – in the sense and form of the Polish nation - as the tortured and executed

Christ who in due course will be resurrected and act as a saviour of all peoples.31

Different concepts of Polishness had been discussed by every generation since the

one which lost the state’s independence in 1795. Even those groups or generations

which gave up the idea of statehood, either by proposing economic and intellectual

improvements in the lands of the former Polish state instead of another national

uprising or by calling for a cross boundary international social revolution, could not

allow themselves, for many political reasons, to give up Polishness.32

What united those who were proposing the independence of Poland with those

who limited their plans to preserving Polish autonomy and Polish identity was that

both programmes meant staying more or less in opposition to the government of

each empire and both proposed keeping a high profile of national awareness.

Identifying with the state, opting for a citizen-type of patriotism, would automatically

31 “And on the third day, the soul shall return to its body; and the nation shall rise

from the dead; and shall free all the nations of Europe from slavery.” (Mickiewicz

1833, p21). 32 In 1938 Stalin accused the KPP (Komunistyczna Partia Polski) leadership of

nationalism and dismantled it, recalling its members to the Soviet Union to be killed

or arrested.

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mean to become German or Russian33. Thus, to stay Polish one had to be a rebel

fighting for the national rights of one’s “oppressed minority”.

2.3 Catholic – Jewish Relations and the Question of Victimhood

When studying Catholic-Jewish relations in the inter war period as reported by

Catholic and Jewish media of that time, and particularly the debate related to the

Doboszyński case, one can observe that both groups competed in seeing

themselves as their respective victims. The vocabulary of “persecution” and “abuse”

which had to be answered by “more effective protection” and “self-defence” can be

seen in comparable quantity in both the Jewish and Catholic press.34

By the time Poland regained its independence at the end of WWI the “golden

times” of Jewish life in Poland were long gone. The new, post war concept of Europe

consisting of national states designed to separate different ethnic groups worsened

the position of Jews relative to Catholic Poles. Before, both used to be co-victims of

the bigger powers, experiencing a more or less similar fate within the Russian or

Austrian Empire. Now Jews were expected to stay in their lower position while non-

Jewish Poles were moving up, becoming the majority, possibly replacing their former

persecutors.35

The difficulty of Poles accepting the fact that after a century of suffering

oppression from the hands of the three occupying powers they can themselves

become oppressors of their minorities was visible already during the Versailles

conference. The Polish delegation led by Roman Dmowski and Ignacy Paderewski

(1860-1941) fought unsuccessfully against the Minorities Treaty that Poland was

forced to sign. The Treaty gave members of the League of the Nations rights to

defend minority groups in Poland in their potential conflicts with the Polish state. In

the opinion of the Polish government this could involve foreign influence on internal

33 The situation was a bit different in Galicia, where Polish national autonomy was

respected and where, with time, many Poles grew loyal to the Austrian Empire. 34 In my work I refer to all non-Jewish Polish media (except the socialist Robotnik) as

Catholic. 35 Kapiszewski 2004, p259.

17

Polish affairs but also meant – and this was much worse – that Poland had lost its

position of victim of the imperial powers and had started to be treated as an

oppressor itself. “The accusation of imperialism”, said Paderewski in the newly

established Polish parliament in May 1919, “came exactly from those three

imperialisms that put us down, looted us and dismembered us”.36 Dmowski,

furthermore, saw the hands of Jews behind the Treaty and behind sentiments

expressed during the peace conference that he thought anti-Polish. According to him,

it was international Jewry which plotted the destruction of Poland, which set Lloyd

George against her and which in exchange for many high positions promised to them

in German politics, committed itself to acting as allies of Germany.37 This accusation

was later used repeatedly in the attempt to picture Poles as victims of Jewish

viciousness. The Catholic media went on calling Jews “the fourth partition of

Poland”38 and identifying them with all evil.39

Among few western thinkers likely to share views on Poland’s victimhood was

G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936).40 He personally knew Dmowski and was involved in

the discussions surrounding the Peace Conference. In 1933 Chesterton became the

philosophical mentor of Doboszyński.

One of the explanations of Doboszyński’s attack on Myślenice employed by

his defenders was that he acted in a state of “higher necessity” supporting Catholic

Poles in their struggle against Jews who “ran rampant in Poland”41. The role of

Doboszyński as a protector of local SN members from a powerful Jew-loving

government and saviour of the Catholic faith from Jew-based communism was

highlighted in the media debate by Warszawski Dziennik Narodowy and other right

wing papers. Naje Folkscajtung and Nowy Dziennik counterbalanced this picture

portraying him as a persecutor of the Jewish people and a petty antisemite.

36 Pobóg-Malinowski 1961, p157. 37 Dmowski 1925, pp105-16. 38 Modras 1996, p178. 39 Researched by Modras 1994, 1996, Landau-Czajka 1994, 1997 and more recently

Libionka 2002 and Pałka 2006. 40 Chesterton 1922. 41 Words used in Doboszyński’s Prayer to Holy Mary in August 1935.

18

If the jurors who pronounced Doboszyński “not guilty” felt comfortable that

justice had been done, it was mainly thanks to his advocates who presented him as a

victim. The Catholic-Jewish competition in victimhood allowed for the defence to be

turned into an accusation.

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III. 23 June 193642

3.1 Protection Squadrons

On the 6th June 1936 Doboszyński returned to Kraków after six weeks of

military training. He came back frustrated and dissatisfied. The army, which he had

known since 1920 when as a 16 year old he volunteered to fight the Soviets,43 was

now in a pitiful state. He observed a lack of organisation, discipline, provisions, and

above all a lack of awareness that, if the army was to provide any security for the

nation, something must be done and as soon as possible. Next day he called a

meeting of all local offices of SN in Kraków District and ordered them to create

paramilitary units, one in each of the groups44. He wanted strong, young people who

had had prior army experience and would be able to obey orders, deal with weapons

and, if necessary, fight. Candidates had to pass “moral selection” confirming their

ideological “soundness”. During the Kraków trial he explained that the main reason

for creating the units was to provide safety for party meetings.45 Doboszyński

believed the authorities used all means available to either block or break up any

opposition gatherings and if they did eventually take place, there was always the risk

42 The description of the events is based on court statements (Doboszyński 1936b,

Małecki 1936) and interviews (1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 12). 43 He never managed to reach the front in 1920. He had only finished preliminary

training when the peace treaty was signed. 44 Thanks to Doboszyński’s organisational activity the number of the SN cells within

the Kraków District grew from a couple in 1934, when he started his work, to over

seventy in June 1936. 45 Doboszyński 1936b.

20

of being attacked by the communists.46 Interviewed after the war, he admitted,

however, that he did consider using the units in other additional ways.47

On 14th June G.K. Chesterton died from heart failure at his home, Top

Meadow, in Beaconsfield. Doboszyński was probably devastated by his death. There

was never a thinker, philosopher, or writer who would inspire him more than the

author of Orthodoxy. All the main concepts of his economic and social theories had

been rooted in Chesterton’s thought. They shared Catholicism, a fundamental phobia

of Germany and a conviction that Freemasons and Jews conspire against the

Christian world. Adam got to know Chesterton in early 193348 when he spent over

three months in Beaconsfield living in the local Catholic Parish hosted by Monsignor

Smith and studying Chesterton extensively. It has never been recorded how close

was their relationship49 or what topics they discussed but Doboszyński’s National

Economy, published shortly after his return from Britain, owes a great deal to

Chesterton’s distributism. Doboszyński himself admitted that all he ever wrote in

economic matters came either from Chesterton or from the fundamental Catholicism

of Thomas Aquinas (1224-74) from whom Chesterton drew inspiration.

46 Ibid., Książka i Wiedza, 1949. He obsessively recalled a meeting at Jagiellońska

Street in Kraków during which the nationalists were attacked by an aggressive mob,

allegedly of Jewish communists. 47 He admitted thinking of an action which would demonstrate the weakness of the

State Police. (Kaczmarski, Tomasik 2010 p.113-114). The parallel of the origins of his

“private army” with the origins of Hitler’s SA is striking. 48 His friends and family recalled that he came back from Britain a significantly

changed man: his religiosity deepened and more conservative, his political views

radicalised. (Interview 12). Upon return from Beaconsfield, he joined Akcja Katolicka

(AK) an association whose aim according to Francesco Marmaggi, Pius XI’s nuncio

in Poland, was “to construct a protective wall against Bolshevism and Freemasonry”.

It was in cooperation with AK that he organized a nationally publicised pilgrimage of

youth to Kalwaria Zebrzydowska in August 1935. 49 Zbigniew Stypułkowski (1904-1979), one of Doboszyński’s defenders in the

Myślenice trials, claimed that this relationship was quite intense and that

notwithstanding the age difference, Chesterton and Doboszyński could be called

friends (Stypułkowski, 1949).

21

Doboszyński’s eulogy describing Chesterton as a human being “on the verge of

sainthood”,50 which appeared in Bunt Młodych on 25th June, must have been written

during one of those days between setting up the military brigades and using them in

action. Perhaps he sketched the main points of the article while cycling back to

Chorowice from Nowy Targ on the 15th June. This preparatory escapade took four

days. He went through towns and villages of the region planning the technical details

of his action, looking for the best hiding places and possible directions into which the

rebellion might spread. He stopped in several places, talking to his national

“comrades” and collecting “news”. In the eyes of the nationalists, the situation was

bad everywhere as far as spreading their ideology was concerned: in Nowy Targ the

manager of “Sokół”51 refused to let a room for SN’s meeting demonstrating, in

Doboszynski’s opinion, total lack of respect for the national idea, in Myślenice “the

trade continued being controlled by Jews, who were supported by the district

authority (Starostwo) headquarters, while persecuted and jail-threatened nationalists

had no means to spread their wings”.52 He believed that the International

Government of World Jewry had moved from Vienna to Kraków.53 For most of his

adult life Doboszyński believed in a Jewish plot to rule the world, achieving which,

required destruction of the Catholic faith by Freemasons and other Jewish secret

enterprises.54 Some have interpreted this obsession as a rebellion against his father,

a liberal, conservative politician, who represented Kraków democrats in the Austrian

Parliament and may have been a member of a Lodge.55 “I could not recognise

Kraków”, said Doboszyński during his first trial, “The city was like Barcelona a month

before the revolution. In Barcelona they burnt churches, here such actions were

50 “If I was God “, wrote Doboszyński, “I would place him in the top row of my choir”

(Doboszyński 1936a). 51 A patriotic, anti-Jewish sports society, in 1926 joined Dmowski’s OWP (Obóz

Wielkiej Polski). 52 Doboszynski, 1936b. 53 Ibid.. 54 Doboszyński 1947b. 55 Nitschke 1993, Interview 8.

22

already discussed.56 That Jew Drobner57, who positioned himself on top of the Leftist

front, was capable of anything at all”58.

To make sure his newly formed military units could be relied upon he

organised two trial runs: on the nights of 18/19 and 19/20 June. The call on 22nd was

the third in a row. About a hundred comrades59 from the villages of the district

answered the call. Among them were his most faithful believers and captive subjects,

peasants from his own estate - Chorowice. By 10 p.m. they had all gathered in the

forest, not far from his house. Some were on horses or bicycles but the majority

came on foot. Some had pistols, axes or field tools, others only pieces of wood.60 The

clearing, known by the locals as “Little Hell” looked completely packed. “We are

charging at Myślenice tonight”, said Doboszyński, “it has begun.” Then he formed

people into marching order, into rows of four with cyclists in front and at the back and

led them across the fields in the direction of Głogoczów. To make sure nobody

slipped away he appointed a reargard. During the trial most of them claimed to have

no idea about what exactly was going to happen in Myślenice. It is possible that the

attack on the police and Starosta came as a bit of a surprise but they would have

certainly realised who was their main target. Doboszyński had been disseminating his

“programme” among his party colleagues and neighbouring peasants for some time;

even persuading a few to take part in his previous actions. Since they had heard him

praying to St. Mary to save the country from Jews at the shrine in Kalwaria, it would

be really difficult not to guess against whom they were being led, at night, in military

56 In April 1935, during a meeting of Kraków City Council, Bolesław Drobner, who

disapproved of spending public money on financing Talmud Torah schools, was

witnessed saying: “I would gladly burn all those Jewish and Catholic sheds!” This

single statement grew into widespread gossip of “Jews planning to burn Churches

and kill priests” during the Myślenice trials. 57 Bolesław Drobner (1883-1962). 58 In all legal statements (1936, 1937, 1947) while describing the situation in Kraków

at the time of the Myślenice escapade, Doboszyński focused on the activities of

Drobner. 59 The numbers differed depending on the source from 50 to 150 participants.

Doboszyński talked about 70 people (Doboszyński 1936b). 60 Altogether the group was armed with 4 pistols and c200 bullets.

23

formation, with wooden sticks and guns in hand. Once on the main road they began

to hum and sing religious hymns to pretend it was a peaceful pilgrimage. Before

entering Myślenice, Doboszyński ordered three teams of cyclists to cut the telephone

lines so disabling the town’s connection with the outside world.

Myślenice had not been chosen by pure chance. Doboszyński used to come

there often enough, invited by local nationalists, to speak against “Jews and the Jew-

supporting government”.61 The meetings took place in the open, on the fields beyond

the River Raba. SN members complained that they could not count on any job in

Myślenice. The head of the district was quite clear that he would “have no opposition

here”.62 Still, they believed being union members helped and would gladly join

Doboszyński’s building workers’ branch of the SN union, Praca Polska, but he

continued to have trouble with its official registration. During the trial he will state:

“The situation of nationalists in Myślenice seemed to be abysmal: one could not

possess a single copy of Orędownik63 before being fined or arrested (…) which was

symbolic of the overall situation in Poland”.64

3.2 The Putsch

The attack started at 3.30. The squad, divided into two main groups each

appointed to specific tasks, dispersed throughout the town centre. Doboszyński as

head of his section fooled the policeman on duty that there was a burglary he was

going to report and broke into the commissariat. The policeman after being wounded

on the head could not utter a single word of protest while the entire place was being

smashed up. The attackers took away all the rifles and bullets that they found and

61 Stoszek 2009. 62 Dulski 1936. 63 An anti-socialist, right-wing daily published in Poznań, representing the interests of

the petite bourgeoisie. 64 Doboszyński 1936b.

24

tried them out firing several times inside and outside the building.65 At the point of

leaving, they again hit the victim’s face with a rubber truncheon. 66

A separate section of only three people, equipped by Doboszynski with a

bottle of paraffin, broke into the Synagogue building to set it on fire.67 As revealed in

the court proceedings later on, Doboszyński wanted to burn down the Synagogue to

“pay back” the Jews for promoting communism in Poland and for inciting the

destruction of Catholic Churches.68

The most demanding task in Doboszyński’s plan, assigned therefore to the

largest number of his people, was to ransack the Jewish shops on the Market

Square. “Jewish” being the only precondition, the order did not specify which kind of

shops should be targeted leaving this decision to the whim of the attackers. Ozjasz

Blumenstock’s Szatnia, the most elegant fashion shop in Myślenice, was their first

choice. The huge glass window was broken and fur coats, jackets and dresses

started disappearing at great speed. A similar fate awaited the premises of Olga

Weinman, Rozalia Goldstein and Berisch Becker.69 Within minutes the burglars were

inside those shops emptying them of any valuables.

At that point the town had already been woken up. People who lived close to

the police station started looking out of their houses to check what was happening.

65 The court proceedings mention 14 rifles, 10 bayonets, 5 pistols, 10 grenades and

458 bullets. During the trial Doboszyński ridiculed the police saying that their arms

were in a scandalous state. 66 Some witnesses later reported that Doboszyński was upset about his people’s

physical attack on an innocent man “doing his duty” and promised to give him job

after SN takes power. 67 Their attempts turned out to be futile. The fire destroyed the entrance room and

stopped, most probably on its own. 68 As the trials showed, those “incitements” were: the Drobner incident in 1935 and

unspecified gossip from Skotniki about “a group” of “some” Hasids plotting to kill a

priest and burn a church there. 69 It is difficult to establish how many shops were attacked altogether. The first press

reports talked about two shops, the official accusation mentioned eight properties

affected (Weinman, Becker, Goldstein, Westreich, Zanker, Blumenstock, Karger,

Emmer), Jewish sources listed over ten of them.

25

The most courageous and curious ones went out in the direction of the centre from

where the loudest noises were coming. Others opened their windows and shouted

questions into the twilight. Józef Chęciński still remembered his family talking to

Doboszyński’s people seventy years earlier. His father asked one of the attackers

whether war had started, since “they all looked like soldiers and were armed”70 but

became reassured by the answer that the matter concerned Jews not Catholics and

went back to sleep.

Doboszyński arrived at the Market Square when the stealing had reached a

climax. He was apparently disgusted71 with what he saw and ordered all stolen goods

to be piled up in front of the shops and burnt. The situation became difficult to control

as in the meantime his people were joined by some local looters who would not listen

to anyone’s orders. Witnesses interviewed in 2009 remembered that a couple of

Catholics, owners of the adjoining shops, followed the burglars trying to smear their

garments with dry paint so that they could be recognised in the full light of day.72

With piles of goods burning in the middle of the square, and all the victims

screaming with fear and running around in an attempt to hide themselves and their

children, the devastation entered yet another stage.73 Axes were used to destroy

doors, windows and furniture, containers and boxes of food were cut into pieces,

bags lifted and grains mixed together. White clouds of fresh flour rising in the

darkness of the night was a picture remembered by most of the witnesses I

interviewed. Anything of value was destined for total destruction. Chaja Becker

70 Interview 2. 71 Several defence witnesses reported Doboszyński being upset by too much

violence and saying to his people “Do not turn a political demonstration into an

ordinary crime.” This version was also confirmed by members of his family. However,

there were other statements, including Doboszyński’s own, suggesting that his

dissatisfaction was caused by the fact that not enough shops were attacked and not

enough damage inflicted. 72 Stoszek, 2009. 73 The description of this stage of the attack varies a lot depending on the sources.

Considered least important during the trial, it received almost no attention. The total

value of all damage inflicted on the Jewish shops was calculated at 10000 zlotys. My

description has been based on the interviews with Myślenice citizens.

26

reported being woken up by an intensive knocking on the shop doors and sending

her twenty year old son to check what was happening. He saw the burglars breaking

in and tried to wake up his sister, who slept in the kitchen:

“At this moment one of the men aimed at me with his rifle. I jumped towards

the wall as he fired in my direction. He missed me but the bullet only just missed my

sister Chana”. 74

They all ran away screaming, Chaja carrying the youngest baby, while the

attackers kept firing at their backs.75

Ozjasz Blumenstock, who unlike the Beckers, lived at a distance from his

shop, did not run away from, but towards, the attackers. When he arrived at the

Square he saw clouds of smoke coming out of his shop and a pile of clothes burning

in front of it. He tried to stop the fire with the help of others because the fire brigade,

although notified, did not arrive.76

At the same time Josef Emmer, loading a wagon in front of his house by

Stradomska Street, was taken by surprise. Attacked with wooden planks and axes,

he dropped everything and ran into his children’s room fearing for their life. Outside,

the wagon was turned upside down and set on fire by Doboszynski’s people.77

Emmer was on his way to the morning market and the wagon loaded with goods to

sell was almost everything that he possessed. The harm inflicted by the attackers

was extremely hard on his modest business.78

Hirsch Westreich avoided physical harm but his shop and his wagon were

totally damaged.79 Josef Hopfenberg, while trying to defend his shop, heard the

words “Here is one, kill him, kill the Jew” shouted at him and saw an axe flying in his

direction. He escaped but the premises were ransacked and his wife was hit with a

74 Becker 1936. 75 Ibid.. 76 Blumenstock 1936. 77 Emmer 1936. 78 Interview 7. 79 Westreich 1936.

27

heavy clock.80 A 58 year old baker, Lejb Wachsberg was also unlucky. Caught on the

street and beaten up by a group of aggressors, he was left unconscious.81 Earlier on,

a similar group stopped the wagon of Majer Berkowicz who was driving to Siepraw

with a Catholic horseman Filip Kulas. The attackers shouted:

“Stop or I will shoot! Jew or Catholic?”

Berkowicz answered he was Catholic but they did not seem to believe him.

“Three or four of them approached the wagon and one hit me close to the eye

with the butt of his rifle. At the same time he turned to his colleague asking: ‘What do

we do with him Mr Engineer?’82 At that point I jumped off and ran. Three or four guns

fired in my direction”.83

Berkowicz must have been lucky because Władysław Święch, a municipal guard later

disarmed and kidnapped by Doboszyński’s people, witnessed84 the entire situation

and was persuaded they did not miss.

A couple of other Jews had been threatened and all were scared before

Doboszyński decided that they had had enough. He blew his whistle three times

which meant that the action on the shops came to an end. The looting on the Square

did not stop after Doboszyński withdrew his squad, at least not immediately. With the

police disarmed and the means of communication disabled, it was not easy to re-

establish security. The Krakow police was only notified when a messenger was sent

next morning by car from the nearby estate of the town’s mayor.85

Doboszyński withdrew slowly from the centre of town along Reja Street. It was

there, as he found out from local informers, that the Starosta, the next target of his

80 Hopfenberg 1936. 81 Wachsberg 1936. 82 Doboszyński was often addressed by his professional title. 83 Berkowicz 1936. 84 Święch 1936. 85 Interview 12.

28

action, lived.86 The Starosta was a government-appointed head of the district. In

1936 the position in Myślenice was occupied by Antoni Bassara, who was, according

to Doboszyński, a corrupted “quarter of an intelligent” who hated nationalist ideology

and persecuted its followers.87 For that he was now to be punished and his flat and

its contents ransacked. Woken up by screams, curses and noises of axes breaking

through doors, the Starosta jumped out of bed and followed his panic stricken

housekeeper into the larder. Soon, however, the larder door was also broken down

by axes and Doboszyński stuck a pistol into his mouth.

“The other one pointed a gun at my head” recollected the housekeeper,

Kunegunda Turek in the Court in Kraków, “Doboszyński asked who it was and I

answered it was a guest of Mr Starosta. (…) When leaving, Doboszyński said to me:

“Madam, please tell Mr Starosta that we were here to thank him for persecuting

national ideology””.88

Before giving the order to leave, Doboszyński made sure that the entire flat

had been totally ransacked.89 Then he formed his squad in rows of four and marched

them out of town. It was 4.30 a.m.

86 Some Jewish shops were still robbed on the way to the Starosta’s flat and

afterwards. There exist reports of Jews terrified by these attacks and the gunfire.

Many kept running between the houses of different family members in order to

protect their parents, children or cousins (Karger 1936, Aftergut 1936, Rand 1936). 87 Interview 8. 88 Turek 1936. 89 Even a painting of the holy Madonna, which used to hang over the Starosta’s bed,

did not survive. The story of Starosta Bassara’s chamber pot being exposed and

carried around the Market Square survived among Myślenice’s inhabitants, although

none of my interviewees was an eye witness to it nor was able to remember who the

witnesses were.

29

3.3 A Failed Revolution

The road they took leaving town in the direction of Dobczyce, King Casimir the

Great Street, will change its name and, for a short while during WWII, become

Engineer Doboszyński Street.90 This fact will be used by the communist regime as

additional evidence of Doboszyński’s cooperation with German Intelligence. On 29

August 1949, after a show trial, Doboszyński will be executed in Mokotów Prison in

Warsaw as a German and American “inspirational” spy. The Final Act of Accusation

prepared by the Military Court of Warsaw District will list the Myślenice events among

the activities organised by Doboszyński “on the demand” of the Germans.

“Fulfilling the function of an inspirational agent of Hitler’s Germany, (…)

indoctrinating the Polish nation with fascist political doctrines and philo-germanic

ideology (…) Adam Doboszyński organised a pogrom of Jews in Myślenice in

1936.”91

This erroneous interpretation will lead, as a side effect, to grave historical

consequences. While claiming that the attack on Myślenice had been ordered by

German fascists, the communists will at the same time reject the possibility that the

ultra-nationalism and fascism of the attackers might have originated from a native,

internal Polish source. This will additionally contribute to the progressive distortion of

Polish interwar history. Cleared of the communists’ accusations in 1989, the “martyr”

Doboszyński will be above all criticism. The inhabitants of his home village,

Chorowice, grandchildren of those who attacked Myślenice, will be able to tell me

that his death had nothing to do with the post war politics, it was just Jews murdering

him as revenge for their destroyed wagons.92 The persecution of Polish nationalists

by the communists will turn many nationalists, as well as pre-war nationalism itself,

into innocent victims and clear them of the accusation of fascism.

A wagon loaded with 140kg of bread, 70kg of sausages and 140 packets of

pipe tobacco awaited Doboszyński’s people by the bridge on the road to Droginia.

90 The idea of a local councillor, approved by the Germans. 91 Książka i Wiedza 1949, pp 567, 573. 92 Interview 10.

30

The provisions were partly bought in Jewish shops,93 but none of their consumers

had any doubt that the aim of the Myślenice escapade was anti-Jewish. They had

listened to their leader over previous years and knew whom he considered the main

enemy of the Nation. The literate ones read and disseminated “Orędownik”, recently

with additional motivation, because it was in this paper that Doboszyński described

the anti-national behaviour of the authorities in Myślenice district.94 Many, like

Płonka95 or Jan Kwinta, followed Doboszyński to Skawina only half a year

beforehand, where they bullied Catholic customers of the Christmas market to refrain

from entering Jewish shops or buying Jewish products.96 All took part in a national

pilgrimage to Holy Mary in Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, where Doboszyński asked God,

in front of a hundred thousand believers to spare the country from Jews, those

“enemies of our Holy Faith and Church” who “go rampant” in the poverty stricken

fatherland.97

Like a majority of Catholics in interwar Poland, Doboszyński had personal

friends who were Jewish. All those friendships, however, came to a sharp end in

1934, just before he became an official member of the National Party. Andrzej

Malkiewicz remembers one of those occasions when his uncle said his final good bye

to a particularly close friend, Bela “Czajka” Gelbardowa (1893-1968), an assimilated

Jewish novelist. “He felt he could not fight the Jews and continue staying in a close

relationship with one of them”.98 Although in June 1936 his main fight was against the

State Police, in which there probably were no Jews, he felt that this fight was to

achieve a political system guaranteeing the total removal of Jews from Poland.99

93 The Catholic ones could not provide a sufficient amount (Doboszyński 1936b). 94 Orędownik 274 1936. 95 Płonka was a former soldier of General Haller’s Legion, known for being the most

antisemitic part of the interwar Polish Army. 96 The “Stick with your own kind” boycott campaign received huge support from both

the government and the Catholic Church (Modras 1996, p179). 97 Doboszyński himself brought 4000 nationalist pilgrims. 98 Interview 8. 99 Idée fixe which Doboszyński never gave up. Still in 1941 he suggested in an open

letter to Antoni Słonimski published by ‘Jestem Polakiem’ that a forced removal of all

31

Anti-Jewish prejudices and personal dislike for Jews can be seen in the

statements of most of Doboszyński’s defence witnesses. Individual Jews are named

there as responsible for the misfortunes of particular witnesses. They own more

successful businesses, win competitions for jobs, lead trade unions, corrupt the

authorities and legal system or run away from illegal communist meetings leaving

Catholics to pay fines or get arrested.100 Twenty of them may ride in one carriage

without being told off while ten Catholics would immediately be fined.101 In Gorlice

Jews who illegally trade on Sunday pay ten times less than Catholics.102 In

Myślenice, where local furriers happen to be nationalists, there is no chance for them

to get any profitable contract since Jews work as intermediaries and control the

prices.103

The key witnesses on whose statements Doboszyński’s lawyers based their

defence had no relationship to Myślenice nor to the June 1936 events in Myślenice.

They were lawyers, doctors, teachers or journalists from large towns and cities in the

Galicia region, educated and outspoken, experienced in carrying out public

discussions on “Jewish matters”. Their role was to be witnesses of the “overall

situation in Poland”, where Jewish persecution of Catholics rose to the level of posing

an existential danger to the latter.

Doboszyński’s squad was dispersed immediately after the first battle with the

police near Poręba. Many of his people had already been arrested, others tried to

hide or returned home. Only the nine most faithful ones and himself continued

marching towards the mountains and on 24th June took part in a second battle

against the border guards in Zubrzyca. Just before this final battle Doboszyński

signed the guest book in a mountain refuge identifying himself and his group as

“fighters for Great Poland”. The same book was also signed by border guards “in

Jews will have to be organised in Poland as soon as the war ends. As a result of this

letter the paper was closed down by the British authorities. 100 e.g. Mech 1937, Brożek 1937. 101 Knotek 1936. 102 Otęski 1936. 103 A particular contract with the Railway Company is referred to by many witnesses

and Doboszyński himself.

32

pursuit of anarchists who try to destroy the State”.104 Doboszyński was arrested on

30 June 1936 near Zawoja, after several days spent on his own hiding in forests by

the Czechoslovakian border.

Preparations for the court trial took almost a year and from the very beginning

received an exceptionally large media attention. Their interest had been so great that

the number of journalists permitted to attend the hearings had to be limited.

Nevertheless for over two years almost forty reporters from Poland and abroad

debated the Myślenice events turning Doboszyński into the most controversial Polish

politician of prewar times. A “dangerous firebrand” inciting civil war in the eyes of

Sanacja, by some referred to as “little Mussolini” and considered fascist, for others a

symbol of Catholic antisemitism of the 1930s, yet another group crowned him as a

Messiah, the one who sacrificed himself for his people. His action, officially treated as

a “rebellion” or a “lawless excess”, was equally easily becoming a “march”, “a

putsch”, an “invasion”, a “failed pogrom” or – as expressed by Doboszyński and his

legal defenders: an “act of justice”. There were elements in the Myślenice events

which provided a basis for each of these descriptions as well as there being

exaggeration present in the views of each side.

The Myślenice debate revealed the “core” of political conflict in Poland,

splitting the arguing parties into four camps, whose different political reasons fuelled

different interpretations. It happened that exaggerating the importance of

Doboszyński’s action lay in the best interests of them all.

104 Doboszynski, 1936b.

33

IV. “Act of Higher Necessity”, Pogrom, March or Anti-Government Rebellion?

4.1 Doboszyński – A Revolutionary Firebrand (Sanacja’s Media Event)

The attack on Myślenice happened at a time of extreme social and political

unrest in Poland. Only one year earlier, in an atmosphere of growing popularity of

strong political leaders in Europe, Poland lost Piłsudski. Unstable and weakened by

internal conflicts, the “post-Piłsudski” camp showed little success in fighting economic

crises and keeping positive public esteem, a situation made more difficult by the

external influence of the social revolutions in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia

as well as strong internal opposition from the left and right of the political scene.

Continuing parliamentary battles, negative media campaigns, street protests and

strikes caused increasing lack of security among both citizens and government itself

which created an atmosphere of tension and suspicion.

In this situation Doboszyński’s action in Myślenice posed great potential

trouble105 for the government. The newly established106 cabinet of Felicjan Sławoj-

Składkowski (1882-1962) was a result of a compromise between two groups of

Piłsudski’s heirs: one led by President Mościcki,107 the other by the army chief,

General Rydz-Śmigły (1886-1941). Constructed in haste, the cabinet worked as a

temporary solution, whose main purpose was to cover the internal weakness of the

105 The adjective “trouble maker” stayed with Doboszynski for the rest of his life and

influenced the attitude of the Polish government in exile to him. They interned him

twice during the war: first in 1941 for his antisemitic article in “I am a Pole” in which

he suggested the expulsion of all Jews from Poland after the war “using the newest

technologies” and the second time in 1943 for plotting against Sikorski at a time

when a difficult agreement with Ivan Majski (1884-1975) and the Soviet Union was

being negotiated (Doboszyński tried to force President Raczkiewicz (1885-1947) to

dismiss General Sikorski from his position as PM). At that time, General Sikorski was

heard asking Doboszyński during an officers’ picnic: “Are you preparing another

Myślenice for me, Lieutenant?” (Harusewicz, 1984, p9). 106 15 May 1936. 107 Ignacy Mościcki (1867-1946), President of Poland (1926-1939).

34

Sanacja camp, which, if exposed, could be used by the opposition. The last thing

Składkowski wanted to see in June 1936 was a political demonstration of power.

As long as feasible the authorities kept calling it a “robbery”. Ilustrowany Kurier

Codzienny, Gazeta Polska and other mainstream newspapers reported that a “gang

of ruffians” led by “a certain Doboszyński” broke into the private flat of the Starosta

and a couple of posh shops in the town centre stealing valuables, clothes and

money. When it turned out that all the “thieves” were carrying their SN IDs and that

their leader was the head of the regional branch of the party, the “theft” interpretation

started sounding unjustifiable. Although the Jewish press regarded Myślenice as

clear evidence of the “pogrom inciting policy of the SN” and the left wing papers

called Doboszyński both “Führer” and “Duce”, the government tried to avoid “political”

explanations of the events. The prime minister Składkowski, in an aggressive answer

to an MP’s interpellation in Parliament on 28th June, repeated with all certainty that

“the town had been attacked by bandits”. By that time the gossip had been confirmed

and Składkowski knew that the “ringleader” was an opposition politician and quite a

conservative one at that. He knew that the “criminal” happened to be a well educated

intellectual from an aristocratic background who had only recently published a

popular work on economic matters.

The initial public condemnation of his act had already started waning and the

danger of him becoming “political competition” for the “helpless government” rose by

the hour. At this point the right wing media styled him a victim of the global chaos

overwhelming the entire country. “Poland is ill” announced Warszawski Dziennik

Narodowy, “no wonder that an emotional individual loses his senses”.108 Pronouncing

Doboszyński mad was an idea that the prosecution played with for a short while109

but in the end Sanacja preferred to see him sane. Only sane could he be vicious

enough to deliberately plan the destruction of whatever was left of state security in

the face of the external and internal enemies plotting against Poland. The trial had

been constructed as a media event during which the rebellious, anti-government

aspects of Doboszyński’s action were highlighted at the expense of his anti-Jewish

“demonstration”. By the second half of the decade antisemitism in Poland was seen

108 Warszawski Dziennik Narodowy, 27.06.36 109 The initial proposals for medical examinations of Doboszyński were quickly

abandoned.

35

as a sign of patriotism so Doboszyński as an enemy of Jews could easily become

potential competition for the government. Therefore the main impetus of the

prosecution had to go towards destroying Doboszyński’s possible role as a patriotic

leader. His action was therefore presented as the antithesis of patriotism. It

“weakened the state” and became “grist to the red mill”.110 He was described as a

soldier who used his military knowledge against his own country, a commander, who

abandoned his squad on the battlefield. To rid his action of any positive claims, a

specific vocabulary was used. An initial rough gangster of a modern type very soon

became an old fashioned, highly destructive firebrand, an eternal “noble robe-

wearing demon rampaging anew on Polish highways”.111

A noble firebrand – “warchoł” – was a suitable, ready to use symbol of a well

established negative association in Polish history and provided an effective

counterbalance to a growing symbol of the self-sacrificing, God anointed “saviour”

which was being constructed by ONR, SN and Doboszyński himself. “SN does not

have a monopoly of patriotism, we have more constructive proposals for this country”

– cried the prosecutor at the end of his dramatic speech in Kraków’s courthouse. The

failure of the jurors to pronounce Doboszyński “guilty” became a serious threat to the

Sanacja’s State and could easily turn into the final straw which could break its back.

At the time that Doboszyński’s first trial was coming to an end, Cardinal

Sapieha, moved Piłsudski’s coffin into a new crypt at Wawel Castle ignoring

Government objections.112 Piłsudski’s legend was the main source of Sanacja’s

legitimacy, his grave was hallowed ground, so the Government could not accept it.

The fact that the Church went ahead regardless shows that power had started

slipping out of the Government’s hands.

110 Prosecutor Szypuła’s speech, reported in Głos Narodu 26.06.37. 111 Gazeta Polska 26.06.1936. 112 Składkowski resigned over the issue but was reinstated by Mościcki.

36

4.2 Doboszyński – A Leader of Great Poland (Nationalist Demonstration of Power)

On the same day that all the Polish media reported the attack on Myślenice,

condemning its organiser, Bunt Młodych published Doboszyński’s debut on their

columns: an eulogy to G.K. Chesterton.113 At this time Myślenice was still being still

interpreted as an “attack by gangsters”, so one of the following issues contained an

apologetic note from the chief editor in which the publication of Doboszyński’s text

was explained. He seemed to be a perfectly respectable fellow, went the

explanation, a good Catholic who drew from Chesterton’s “sunny religiosity”, but here

we are, as Chesterton once said, “apathy can be worse than death”, the madness of

the Polish situation has reached the point of breaking down the best of us. 114

The initial uncertainty of SN and ONR whether to claim or reject links to

Doboszyński resulted from the political gridlock in which they found themselves. On

one hand some circles in the young nationalists were having “an affair” with

Sanacja115 at that time, on the other, Doboszyński’s action, if it received public

condemnation, could have put a stain on SN’s moral standing as an opposition to the

government. The hesitation, however, did not take long. After the initial statement of

the Kraków SN headquarters that they had absolutely nothing to do with Myślenice

as Doboszyński “acted on his own account being on official leave from his

organisational duties”,116 they quickly changed their decision and gave him the

party’s and the national camp’s full support. After having boycotted the parliamentary

election in July 1935, the right wing opposition had no comparable opportunity to

have its voice heard.

As early as three days after Myślenice, expressing his concerns about the

situation of Polish Jews squeezed between the antisemitism of Sanacja and the

antisemitism of Endecja, Henryk Hescheles predicted that Doboszyński’s trials were

113 Doboszyński, 1936a. 114 Bunt Młodych, 15.07.36. 115 Which resulted in their joining Związek Młodej Polski, a young and military

oriented wing of OZON (Obóz Zjednoczenia Narodowego). 116 Goniec Częstochowski, 27.06.36.

37

going to become: “the nationalists’ tribunes for indoctrination”.117 In his opinion

Myślenice was yet another step towards the illegal takeover of the state’s control,

meticulously planned and performed by SN. SN, for its part, felt however that the

switch of power between the government and themselves (at least that part of it

represented by moral leadership) had already taken place. Somewhere between

Spring 1936 and 1937, when the trial of Doboszyński’s accomplices started,118 the

radical nationalists in Poland stopped considering themselves as suppressed and

controlled by the government minority. That was why the lawyers of the forty seven

accused decided that there was no need to defend them. Instead, they launched an

aggressive campaign of accusation.

By that time antisemitism was not anymore considered contrary to

Catholicism.119 Thus open hatred towards Jews and any party supposedly on the

Jewish side started being expressed freely from the very beginning of the trial. The

thirteen defenders of Doboszyński’s squad “heiled” their clients and vice versa in

front of the Tribunal, paying absolutely no attention to the fact that a significant group

of international journalists interpreted their gesture as open praise of Hitler. They

spoke from the position of moral power, throwing wild accusations at all and sundry

and ignored any attempts of the leading judge to subdue them.

In the opinion of SN lawyers their clients, men who robbed, stole, set fire,

threatened, hit and attempted to kill Jews in Myślenice, were not guilty of any criminal

offence. They had no other choice but to follow Doboszyński and act this way as they

all acted in self-defence. Jews not only plotted to economically destroy Catholics,

they also became a physical threat to them. “Jews dare to shoot Poles by the walls of

Częstochowa”, cried Orędownik in March 1937, with other national papers following.

Any crime committed by an individual Jew against an individual Catholic rose in scale

to a Jewish war against Catholic Poles.

The reports from the Myślenice trials were extensive, almost obsessively

detailed. Many issues of Warszawski Dziennik Narodowy and other right wing titles

had to be censored in order to ban their anti-government impact. Anti-Jewish

117 Chwila, 27.06.36. 118 Their trial finished on 5 June 1937 with 36 sentences between 10-20 months and

11 acquittals. 119 e.g. Warszawski Dziennik Narodowy 14.03.36.

38

comments, on the other hand, were never discouraged or prevented by censorship.

The questions of the defence were almost exclusively of an anti-Jewish character

and very rarely had anything to do with the attack on Myślenice. “Is it true that Jews

started the Russian revolution and spread communism in Poland?”, “Do you know

that in Soviet Russia Churches were burnt but Synagogues survived?” or “Did you

have many unfair Jewish competitors?” – were the favourite questions of the defence

lawyers. The role of witnesses was simply to confirm what the questions suggested:

“England owes the collapse of its Empire to the Jew Disraeli and Spaniards are being

murdered by Jewish Marranos”.120 The SN interpretation of Myślenice presented the

jurors with an artificial alternative that their verdict was a choice between the

Bolshevik star and the Catholic cross, between Judeopolonia and a national state.

This alternative will be revived by many historians after the fall of communism.121

On 5th November 1936, more than half a year before Doboszyński’s first trial,

the Minister of Justice122 spoke to the lawyers about the future directions of the Polish

legal system, which should abandon “beautiful but naïve democracy” and help

establishing the “total state”.123 A court in a total state that he imagined would have

no problem locking up its political enemies in jail. As it was, the jurors proclaimed

Doboszyński innocent.

4.3 Doboszyński – An Antisemite (Jewish Furore)

From the very beginning Myślenice received a highly symbolic place in the

Jewish interpretation. Three days after Doboszyński’s invasion a journalist of Nasz

Przegląd drew comparison between the “March on Myślenice” and other fascist

“marches” in Europe. “In the history of Fascism there is the March on Rome. In the

history of Nazism there is the March on Berlin. In the history of Polish antisemitism

there will always remain the March on Myślenice”.124 Notwithstanding the difference

in scale, there were aspects of the event that, in his opinion, justified this comparison.

120 Nowy Dziennik, 26.06.37. 121 Michlic 2007. 122 Witold Grabowski (1898-1966). 123 Robotnik, 12.11.36. 124 Nasz Przegląd, 26.06.36.

39

A young, openly antisemitic leader of a nationalist party gathered a group of his

followers, formed them into an armed unit and victoriously entered a nearby town. All

to demonstrate the party’s power and spread its ideology. The article was quite

sarcastic, it showed the danger of nationalist propaganda, pointing to its pan-

European context but still pretended to mock it at the same time. “The aim of this

entire political movement”, it said, “is to conquer a poor Jewish stall with celluloid

combs or cotton long johns”. In the middle of 1936 Nasz Przegląd and the majority of

Polish Jews continued to put faith in the value of their Polish citizenship. Myślenice

Jews attacked by Doboszyński at first hoped to get help in their home town and later

expected justice from their fatherland. By the time the Myślenice trials were finished

both expectations and the hopes of Polish Jews had become significantly reduced.

The first rumours from Myślenice reached Kraków early the next morning and

mentioned hundreds of injured and killed.125 The story went that the local Catholics

“jumped on their Jews, burning and killing”. As unbelievable as it sounded, since

Myślenice was a resort whose income depended on Jewish holiday tourism, the

surprised editors of Nasz Dziennik decided to send down four reporters to investigate

the situation. Although they quickly found out that the rumours were exaggerated

because there were no casualties, they did not return relieved. Things looked bad in

any case. Myślenice turned out to be something more than yet another uncontrolled

excess of an angry mob. It was a pogrom led by an SN leader, a well organized party

job. Myślenice meant that the Polish fascists had attempted to move Poland yet

another step closer to “Hitlerland”.126

In the opinion of Polish Jews there was little difference between Mussolini’s

Brown Shirts and Endecja’s Young Academics, between the speeches of Hitler, the

speeches of Doboszyński or the writings of Dmowski, They were not persuaded by

the argument, undeniable in the opinion of Prosto z Mostu or Orędownik, that Polish

nationalism cannot be bad since it is based on the good Catholic religion. Also the

other argument – used by the National Camp from the 1930s till today – that Polish

nationalism had nothing to do with fascism because it was anti German – sounded

even weaker in Jewish ears. For Józef Zanker, a young Jagiellonian University

educated Jewish lawyer, whose family had been living in Myślenice for five

125 Nowy Dziennik, 24.06.36. 126 Term used by interwar leftists (e.g. Robotnik, 12.11.1936).

40

generations, it made no difference if he was denied the right to live in Poland

because of his race, because of his religion or because of his “inner-strangeness” to

“real” Polishness. He also had difficulty understanding the concept of economic

antisemitism, especially on the local, Myślenice territory. Why the competing bakeries

of Pitala and Górnik did not “steal each other’s living space” but the bread and rolls of

Heutlinger, who was born on the same street and educated in the same school,

started posing an “economic threat to the Polish nation”.127

Observing the changes in Catholic public opinion (from initial condemnation to

final enthusiastic praise), the reaction of the government (in court and outside) to the

behavior of SN (Doboszyński, his squad and their legal defenders), the Jewish

interpreters of Myślenice rose in uproar. They had finally realised that the nationalists

will not cure themselves from their madness, neither will they be cured by the state. It

was therefore high time Jewish complaints were heard in the world. The Jewish press

competed in outrage. “Scandal”, “Shame”, “Pogrom”, “Political Banditism”, “Hitlerism”,

“Hooliganism”, “Nationalist attempt to introduce terror”, shouted Nasz Przegląd, Nowy

Dziennik and Naje Folkscajtung. Jewish MPs in the Polish parliament used a similar

vocabulary. During the 1937 trials Nowy Dziennik tried to describe the phenomenon

of Doboszyński and his miraculous transformation from a “slightly disobedient boy” to

a “martyr of the national idea”,128 and to give it possibly the widest context in order to

explain the miracle. The situation was becoming hopeless when, next to the reports

from Doboszyński’s trials there were notices of the so-called “Aryan paragraph” being

introduced by yet another union of professionals129 and information about ongoing

discussions concerning the best methods of expulsion of Jews from Europe or the

obituaries of Jews killed in antisemitic attacks.130

In June 1937, after a meeting of the Town Council in Kraków City Hall, an SN

councillor Dr. Kuśnierz verbally abused and physically attacked another councillor Mr

Szyf. Mr Szyf was of Jewish origin, Dr. Kuśnierz was a lawyer, one of the defence

127 Interview 7. 128 Nowy Dziennik, 29.05.37. 129 One of the main supporters of the Aryan paragraph among members of the

Kraków Chamber of Doctors was Doboszyński’s brother-in-law, Dr. Malkiewicz. 130 During the years 1936-7 about 100 deaths of Polish Jews killed by anti-Semites

were reported in media (cf Bauer 1974, reports 118-350 deaths, Cała 2009, only 30).

41

team in the Myślenice process going on at that time. If not for the Jewish press, the

incident would have passed unnoticed.

Almost immediately after his arrest in 1947 the communists started a

campaign presenting Doboszyński as a close friend of Hitler.131 They did it to support

the idea of him being an “imperialistic spy”. In 1949 the grimaced faces of the two

holding hands were published in Nr 26 of Trybuna Wolności and a poem about their

planning the attack on Myślenice Jews appeared in Nr 27 of Szpilki. It would be

difficult to say if any of the people who sentenced Doboszyński to death truly

believed in his sin, which was so evidently untrue. Certainly, according to their vision

of the world, Poles could never be fascist on their own account and if they were, they

were traitors, germanophiles or spies. According to some interpreters of history132,

those responsible for his “legalized murder” were Jews and the 1949 show trial was

nothing else but Jewish revenge for Myślenice. This is strongly believed in Chorowice

today. I was told that the village suffered 50 years of negligence from the communist

authorities as retribution for taking part in the antisemitic attack and that a “certain

Jewish doctor” who worked in Myślenice hospital in the 1970s murdered any patient

from “Doboszyński’s village”, no matter what illness the poor victim went to hospital

with.133

In fact the secret behind communist hatred for Doboszyński can be quite

easily deciphered. In spring 1943 Doboszyński launched an aggressive campaign in

London against Władysław Sikorski (1881-1943) and the Sikorski-Majski agreement,

revealing at the same time his deep animosity and total distrust for Soviet Russia.

This and the additional fact of representing the pre-war national camp was more than

enough to make him an enemy of the new Polish State. To receive the death penalty

there was no need for him to also be an ex-enemy of Myślenice’s Jews. The fact that

some of his prosecutors happened to be of Jewish origin means that people of

Jewish origin happened among the employees of the UB (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa),

but does not necessarily mean that they felt much solidarity with Jewish shop-

131 Kaczmarski, Tomasik 2010, pp 212-3. 132 This is generally believed by Doboszyński’s family and friends, most nationalist

and right wing groups in Poland and some professional historians, although few

would openly admit it in writing. 133 Interview 11.

42

keepers from Myślenice. Doboszyński was condemned by the communists as a

symbol of a nationalistic, “bankrupted” ideology, not as an individual who once upon

a time attacked the Comrade Judges’ fellow Jews.

With the tragedy of the Holocaust, Doboszyński’s action of 1936 receded from

individual Jewish memory. In the light of what happened to the Myślenice community

in August 1942, it seemed ridiculous to remember Doboszyński.134 On the other

hand, the anti-Jewish media war carried out by nationalists during the Myślenice trials

had been preserved in Jewish collective memory as one of the best examples of the

“language of hate”, of words paving the road to Auschwitz.

4.4 Doboszyński – A Messiah for Poland (Adam’s performance)

Doboszyński’s family remembered the day in their flat on St. Anne’s Street in

Kraków when Adam “decided to make his case heard.”135 He sat in the armchair with

a newspaper on his lap, reading a report from the court trials related to the “March”

events.136 “This is what one has to do”, he said, upset that a large part of the article

had been dedicated to presenting the political views of the accused, “the Court Hall is

nowadays the only tribune left for us” – saying “us”, he meant the right wing

opposition. The main reason for organising the Myślenice events was Doboszyński’s

desire to get arrested and put on trial. He needed the process as a theatre stage

from which his “improvement” programme for Poland could be announced. The

interest that Myślenice cases sparked, and the media attention they received, could

not please him more.

Doboszyński’s family considered him a genius from his very early years. The

best in everything he touched: all his school certificates had distinctions, he was

brilliant in sport, skilled in languages and never had any problems finding friends.137

At seventeen he became a student of two different departments: law in Warsaw and

engineering in Gdańsk. After a short hesitation he chose Gdańsk, where Polish

134 Interview 9. 135 He admitted it to his family, Interview 8. 136 The aggressively suppressed 17-21 March strike in the Semperit factory turned

into violent street demonstrations organised jointly by PPS and KPP. 137 Interview 8.

43

students were particularly needed to fight against Germans and Germanisation. From

the very beginning he became famous as an extremely active leader of all Polish

student organisations. He, himself, particularly remembered a society called “Wisła”.

All these national support groups, or as their members called them “self-defence”

groups, were highly antagonistic and fuelled with negative prejudice against the

“others”. It was in Gdańsk that Doboszyński became influenced by people and

ideologies of the far right. It was also there where his outstanding talent as a public

speaker was first recognized and praised. The ability to move the masses and make

them listen to his words boosted his ego to the point of conceit.

After the war Doboszyński explained to his communist prosecutors that his

choosing of political side was purely circumstantial and caused by the academic

environment which, at that time in Poland, was for most part revolutionary and

nationalistic. There were however elements of his general attitude to life, such as his

Catholic belief, admiration for military order or anti-Semitism that predestined him to

join rather extreme right wing groups. In 1931 he published a short novel called “The

Pregnant Word”. Its main character, Witek, is a young man of outstanding talents as

an orator, able to hypnotise the masses with his enchanting voice and indoctrinate

them with ideologies of his choice. Feared by representatives of traditional social and

political powers: journalists, politicians and Freemasons, he indulges in a short love

affair with an intelligent and rich Jewess, Ala, only to realise that the possibility of

producing half-Jewish children is such a repulsive idea, he has to reject it on moral,

religious, cultural and racial grounds. Although unspecified, the environment in which

Witek and Ala live is quite easily recognisable as Poland in the early 1930s. It is a

country of corruption and political chaos, endangered by the communist movement

and infiltrated in every possible way by greedy and powerful Jews. Only an all

encompassing fight against them designed and carried out by an intelligent leader

stands a chance of diverting fate and saving the state from collapsing . Most

predictably, it is Witek helped by a daughter of a legendary, Piłsudski-styled freedom

fighter who becomes recognised as the desired leader in the novel’s finale.

From the early 1930s Doboszyński believed that he was able to work out the

answers to what he understood was the main problem in Poland: economic crisis.

Together with other young nationalists he strongly opposed liberal democracy and all

its later consequences (including the free market) which in their opinion derived from

the ideological credo of the French Revolution. These were the views that in his

44

teenage years led him to heated discussions with his father138 and to his enthusiastic

interest in Italian Fascism. There were elements in the theory of Mussolini’s state,

such as centralisation of power, a one party political system and national control of

key industries that he regarded highly, although the entire system lacked stability and

a strong ideological base, both of which Doboszyński was soon to find elsewhere. In

March 1933 he left politically unstable Europe to stay for three months in the quiet

and more reliable environment of old, conservative England. It was in the Catholic

parish of Beaconsfield, and in the writings of G.K. Chesterton, that he found the

missing foundations for the political and economic system he was constructing: the

Catholic Church (as the foundation supporting a state) and Catholic religion (as a

core of national identity).

Soon after the British escapade he published “The National Economy”, his life-

work and certainly the most serious economic dissertation proposed by Sanacja’s

opposition before WWII. In its introduction he defended Hitlerism as a system based

on the Christian values but lacking full practical realisation.139 This statement

probably cost him his life after the war. Upon the publication of the National

Economy, Doboszyński met Dmowski and as a result of this meeting joined the SN

branch in Kraków. He was given “Witek’s” position of propaganda officer and

immediately moved into action. He travelled around Poland140 disseminating his

“repair programme” among SN members, students, groups of professionals, farmers

and all others willing to listen. The main element of his teaching, as remembered by

witnesses,141 was drawing people’s attention to the Jewish and Masonic danger and

persuading them to actively oppose the “fourth, Jewish partition of Poland”.142 It is

difficult to say how big was his influence on people at that time.143 Unlike Dmowski,

138 Interview 8. 139 Doboszyński 1934, pVI. 140 Kraków region: November 1934 – February 1935,

Elsewhere in Poland: February 1935 – June 1936 & February – August 39. 141 “Fighting Jews” is considered Doboszyński’s inheritance by the inhabitants of

Chorowice (Ślęzak 2000). 142 A metaphor incessantly used by Doboszyński. 143 In the majority of cases the number of participants is unknown. Just one meeting

with the Association of Technicians in Warsaw (24.06.39) gathered over one

45

who trusted in traditional ways of disseminating ideas and so left many writings,

Doboszyński wanted to be a man of more active means of communication: a lesson,

a lecture, a discussion, a pilgrimage, a performance.

In a private letter sent to his mother in January 1937 from St Michael’s prison

in Kraków, Doboszyński reported having analysed the origins of his ideas and

arriving at the conclusion that they were not a result of his theory, but rather his deep

instincts. He studied the work of Pareto at that time and agreed with him that

societies similarly to individuals first follow their emotions to explain them ex post by

logical theories. “I caught myself red handed” , he admitted, “I claimed I acted pushed

by sophisticated reasons while in fact I was fuelled by subconscious instincts.”144

Being a thinker, authorship of the “National Economy” made Doboszyński an

heir of Dmowski, while driven by emotions, moulded as a “man of action”, he

positioned himself closer to Piłsudski. To become an ideal Polish leader and another

legendary saviour of the country he had to connect the two. Polish “Messiahs”

traditionally possessed both, intellectual and physical power, like the romantic “Great

Spirits” who led the nation on the barricades.

“When I stood alone in front of God and the people, I felt responsible to act, it

was my duty to intervene”.145 From the point of view of Doboszyński’s defenders the

similarity to Piłsudski had also been too great to ignore. A romantic individualist of a

sharp brain and biting tongue, madly in love with his fatherland, militarily oriented,

working alone against all the odds for his own vision of Poland, at one point noticing

that the situation around him leads to chaos hence taking the difficult decision to act

by force and in consequence leading a political demonstration, a “march”. Such was

Piłsudski of 1926146 and Doboszyński a decade later. This line of defence had been

carefully constructed of course. Piłsudski being the spiritual father of Sanacja and still

considered by many its symbol, there would be no direct comparison made between

thousand participants, by that time though Doboszyński’s fame had grown as a result

of the trials. 144 Kaczmarski, Tomasik 2010, p131. 145 Doboszyński 1936b. 146 According to Doboszyński, Piłsudski’s originally great idea lacked efficient

continuation. “In 1926 I was full of hope…” he sighed with regret in one of his 1937

court testimonies.

46

him and Doboszyński. On the other hand, the fact that the “Warsaw March” could

constitute a context for the “Myślenice March” had been used in the trials with

extreme efficiency.

Doboszyński was not given a chance to realise his dream. He spent the years

that could have been crucial to him becoming a true national leader in Sanacja’s

prison. Many of his supporters counted this fact among the greatest losses of

interwar Poland. “You are not answering the questions asked by the Court but by the

entire nation”, one of Doboszyński’s defenders pressured the jurors in his final

speech “You will answer ‘not guilty’ and then we will all go to Kalwaria, kneel down

and pray”. 147

While in prison, awaiting the result of the second process, Doboszyński

received a poem which praised and glorified his Myślenice performance, naming him

“Prophet”, “Moses” and “Christ”. The author,148 obviously trying to appeal to the

religious conscience of the judges, finished the last verse with a dramatic call to God:

Oh, Eternal God of all conquistadors

Make sure that when we run, we do not damage flowers

Such fragile violets that grow by darkest woods

Look at your humble servants and save Doboszyński, the best!149

147 Stypułkowski’s speech reported by Orędownik 28.06.37 148 Konstanty Dobrzyński. 149 Kaczmarski, Tomasik 2010, p143.

47

V. Conclusions

The Sanacja government struggling with economic crisis and the final collapse

of the old PPS legend after the death of Piłsudski, needed Doboszyński to be an

outlaw, a symbol of a destructive and chaos-producing opposition. In Sanacja

language he became an “anarchist”, a “revolutionary bully”, not much different in his

“lunatic brawling” from the communists and similarly dangerous to the stability of the

state. Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny and Gazeta Polska compared the invasion of

Myślenice to the worst activities of XVII and XVIII century Polish nobles, traditionally

blamed for the loss of independence. The criticism, however, had to be made

carefully, since the government claimed the inheritance of Piłsudski, himself author of

a coup d’état in 1926 and an authoritarian, military-oriented leader. Condemning

Doboszyński’s “act of higher necessity” while legitimising Piłsudski’s, as tricky as it

was, seemed vital to Sanacja’s political survival. Curing the state which had already

been cured before150 could not be allowed.

In the overall opinion of the right-wing opposition “Sanacja” had not been

working. The country badly needed another treatment. Thus Myślenice started being

used as a symbolic “final warning”. Warszawski Dziennik Narodowy, Trybuna

Narodowa and Głos Narodu kept describing Doboszyński’s case in a highly

emotional way using the vocabulary of a victim: “an act of self-defence”, “an idea

conceived in utter desperation”, “a cry issued from the edge of a void at the moment

of falling down”. The void into which Poland was falling had been caused by Jews,

the incarnation of the destructive power from which the nation needed to be

defended. Jews were seen by nationalists both as a leading force behind

communism and among the biggest, corruption causing industrialists which had to be

identified, accused and punished. Enlarging the importance of Doboszyński’s action

became a good strategy to achieve it. Sanacja also used antisemitism as a political

strategy, therefore Myślenice proved to be a very powerful weapon to its more

nationalistic opposition, because it formed a symbol of increasing Jewish persecution

of Catholics aided by corrupted state officials.

Adam Doboszyński did not march on Myślenice to fulfil nationalist youth’s

dream of radical action. Whatever the Sanacja press opinion of him, anarchic

150 Sanacja owed its name to the latin verb “sano, sanare” – to cure.

48

brawling was not where he belonged. He was not yet another hot headed right wing

revolutionary who believed that the destruction of one small Hasidic community, no

matter how successful economically, would change the overall situation in the

country. For all his support of many elements of the ONR programme, on June 22

1936 he had his own agenda. Myślenice was to become a means to introduce,

promote and disseminate a specific, carefully designed political solution: Adam

Doboszyński’s Programme for Poland, the only one that could save the collapsing

fatherland. The Myślenice action had to be serious enough to require a court trial but

not too “criminal” to be condemned by the general public. From his early teenage

years Doboszyński felt he was predestined to play the role of leader. In the 1920s he

led Polish students fighting against the Germans in Gdańsk; now it was time to lead

all Catholic Poles against Jews and the Jewish economy symbolised by a small

Galician town 30 km South of Kraków.

To the end of his life Doboszyński never regretted “Myślenice”.151 No wonder.

The trials worked better than he expected and brought him fame he could only dream

of before.

The Jewish interpretation of the Myślenice action was probably the simplest

one. Jews did not distinguish between Sanacja’s, SN’s, ONR’s and Doboszyński’s

own versions of anti-Semitism. In the opinion of the Jewish media, Myślenice was yet

another violent attack of a Catholic mob on a vulnerable and already impoverished

Jewish community. The lack of fatalities in Myślenice was accidental. In the opinion

of the journalists of Nasz Przegląd, Nowy Dziennik or Chwila the Myślenice pogrom

performed by one of the SN leaders became clear evidence of this party’s attitude

towards Jews as well as Sanacja’s lack of will and powerlessness in counteracting it.

Polish and international Jewish media competed in magnifying the significance of

Myślenice. What happened in the town and what was happening in the courts during

Doboszyński’s trials, grew into a symbol of the situation of Jews in 1930s Europe.

The review of the recent historical writings on Adam Doboszyński and his

action in Myślenice reveals that only one interpretation out of many original

interpretations has survived until today.152 The Myślenice event had been recorded

151 Interview 8. 152 Most post communist scholars studying Doboszyński e.g. Nitschke 1993, Łętocha

2008, Kaczmarski, Tomasik 2010, represent a view which had directly evolved from

49

by all four sides of the conflict: Jews, whose rights had been violated, Sanacja,

whose authority had been offended, the opposition who got blamed for the offence

and Doboszyński, who planned and performed it. Three of these sides, covering the

Polish, Catholic perspective are quite easy to reconstruct, just by a careful look at the

pre-war media debate or comparative searches in the archives. The Jewish

perspective, however, is much more difficult to access. Jews, who were the main

reason Doboszyński’s action ever happened, its main target and the main subject of

public debate surrounding the trials, in the end mattered very little. Their story had

never become part of mainstream Polish history, had never been listened to or taken

into account in historical analysis. By the time Doboszyński marched on Myślenice,

Jews had already lost most of their legal rights in Poland and what was left only

mattered in theory.153 In the media reports Myślenice Jews had often been referred to

as a faceless group, their surnames misspelled, their statements totally confused and

mingled together. In court they were also ignored and underrepresented, diminished

by Doboszyński’s defenders who hardly ever asked them questions or cared about

what they had to say. Therefore, historians who do not want to limit themselves to the

Catholic version of this important part of Polish history face a difficult job. Entering

the Archives and libraries they have to leave behind the official, well preserved story

which can only so easily find confirmation in documents and start searching for the

untold. Without those missing puzzles the picture will never be complete.

the original SN interpretation without even trying to present other potential readings

and dismiss inconvenient evidence where testimonies conflict. 153 Tomaszewski 1995.

50

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List of Translations:

Biblioteka Jagiellońska (Jagiellonian Library)

Komunistyczna Partia Polski (Polish Communist Party)

Młodzież Wszechpolska (All-Polish Youth)

Obóz Wielkiej Polski (Camp of Great Poland)

Obóz Zjednoczenia Narodowego (Camp of National Unity)

Polska Partia Socjalistyczna (Polish Socialist Party)

PWN (Polish Scientific Publisher)

Stronnictwo Narodowe (National Party)

Uniwersytet Jagielloński (Jagiellonian University)

Związek Młodej Polski (Union of Young Poland)

Związek Młodzieży Polskiej (Union of Polish Youth)