Mrs. Basia

You can compose well about the dead, or not at all. That's why I don't compose anything, but I quote Thomas Five, who wrote something like that a year before Mrs. Barbara died.

Scary facts of Kaczyński's life in the fresh book “Putin's Spies”

It was mid-September 1980, the hot period of the revolution of "Solidarity", just after the August agreements were signed. The twenty-one-year-old Barbara Skrzypek came to work at the Office of the Council of Ministers (URM). She spent 9 years with 4 prime ministers, including Jaruzelski, Messner and Rakowski. She served as, among others, an older referee and elder statistician at a secret law firm, in the Prime Minister's office and in the office of the head of the URM, which since 1985 was General Michał Janiszewski, 1 of the co-authors of the introduction of martial law in 1981 and a associate of the Military Council of National Salvation.

We don't know precisely what Fiddler was doing in UMR. But the fact of working in a secret law firm, to which papers containing the most crucial secrets of the state were sent to the head of government by various authorities and institutions and a position in the Prime Minister's office, means that "Mrs. Basia" was a individual of full trust not only of superiors, but besides of civilian and military services, who, after all, thoroughly examined all those who had access to state secrets. Their “tightness”, but there could be no uncertainty about their loyalty.

Barbara Fiddler's career in URM ended on September 10, 1989. This is simply a peculiar moment. 2 weeks earlier, the first non-communist Prime Minister – Tadeusz Mazowiecki – was elected, who Kaczyński tried so hard to glue with Jaruzelski. Despite this, the Violin did not decide to stay in the URM to participate in the historical change and wait for the people of "Solidarity". She followed her boss – General Janiszewski – to the office of president Jaruzelski. Here we come to the point – both Breitkopf and Skrzypek were among Janiszewski's closest collaborators, who in turn was considered to be 1 of General Jaruzelski's most trusted associates.

Brilliant career in the USSR

Janiszewski since 1972 was his sidekick successively as head of the cabinet of the Minister of Defence, head of the URM, yet as head of the office of the President. He was besides a associate of the PZPR and the Military National Rescue Council (WRON), an unconstitutional body that led the state during martial law. A litany of positions that must impress anyone who knows the reality of that time. As far as his influences are concerned, he invented the name Military National Rescue Council, and as 1 of the 2 people (the second was General Florian Siwicki) interviewed the candidates for WRON.

In the first period of his military career he owed much to the russian military, who held the most crucial positions in the Polish army at the time. In 1950, as a twenty-four-year-old, he joined the Communist organization and became a listener of the Officer Radio Communications School in Zegrz podwarszawski. He became an officer in no time – he completed a training course for engineers in little than 3 months. Interestingly, he did not volunteer there alone, but was appointed as a university student in Gdańsk, which he did not complete. Immediately after completing the course, alternatively of going to the garrison somewhere in Poland, he was assigned to the MON communication hub. After a year and a half, he became deputy chief of the unit (at the Lieutenant-Colonel's stage) and chief engineer, i.e. co-responsible for all the ministry's communication with the outside world.

It would be a mistake to say that a individual with specified a key position had to enjoy the highest assurance of superiors. She had to be checked not only thoroughly by military services, but besides likely associated with them. These were the Stalinist times, the most crucial positions in the army were occupied by the Russians with a rich past in the russian Army – the commandant of the communication school Janiszewski finished was a russian officer, as was the head of the communication troops, and the Ministry of Defence, whose communication Janiszewski served, was the Soviet-Polish general Konstanty Rokossowski. His promotions in the 1950s were besides approved by russian officers. Not only, of course. For example, the signatures of 1 of the heads of the MON department of Colonel Napoleon Czesnak can be found in Janiszewski's personnel files that I managed to reach. This is worth mentioning, due to the fact that Czesnak during the Stalinist period was a juror in political processes – including the underground management of PPS. In 1951 – a nomen omen on September 17 – he personally received from Janiszewski explanations in which he accounted for his "small-town" past. Janiszewski's father was a doctor, a Wielkopolska insurgent, and was tortured in Mauthausen concentration camp. He had an episode in the German Army during planet War I, but besides participated in the Polish-bolshevik War. Father's brother was in turn a priest who besides died in the Nazi camp (Gusen). parent – Maria from Schmidt's home – had German roots, her ancestors arrived in Poznań from Saxony in the mid-19th century. The household before the war was associated with the Pilsudczykowski camp. Janiszewski himself worked as an electromonter in a German company. From the point of view of the Stalinist commanders, it must be acknowledged that "compromises" alone.

It is reasonable to ask if Michael Janiszewski was active with russian military services? The question, however, to which there is no clear answer, strengthens his further, superb career.

From MON in 1954, Janiszewski switched to the head of communications troops, from where in 1962 he was sent to a one-year course at the communication academy in Leningrad. Here 1 crucial remark – communication troops are 1 of the most delicate types of armed forces, which is in close interest of intelligence and counterintelligence services. Upon his return from Leningrad, Janiszewski went consecutive to the General Staff of the Polish Army, suggesting that the course in the USSR was to prepare him for this. This is evidenced by the position of commandant of the command post, which took place 4 months after his return. On the another hand, who commanded was another “Soviet associate”, the chief of general staff from 1954 to 1965 Yuri Bordziłowski, a Red Army general and a associate of the Bolshevik organization since the 1920s, who in past enrolled as the 1 who ordered the military to usage weapons during the pacification of Poznań June 1956. In the mid-1950s, Janiszewski received a watch from him as a reward for his “combinant and self-sacrificing work”.

President Kaczyński at the law firm

So it is hard to consider it a coincidence that at the end of the Polish People's Republic, in 1983, Janiszewski entered the authorities of the Polish-Radar relationship Society, which was led by a erstwhile NKVD partisan soldier from the Second planet War – Stanisław Wroński.

Let us go back to where the destiny of Michał Janiszewski and Jarosław Kaczyński crossed. Which is the president's office. erstwhile Jaruzelski became the head of state and Janiszewski became the head of his law firm, he was dismissed by Jerzy Breitkopf, moving to the seat of the deputy. No wonder he was his advisor, too. Barbara Skrzypek became Janiszewski's secretary. It is hard to consider it a coincidence that Skrzypek and Breitkopf retained their positions erstwhile the fresh head of this office, Jarosław Kaczyński, and that it was they who were the most Kaczyński – a individual without any experience in authoritative work – helped find themselves in that position. Intriguing that Janiszewski in his memoirs is silent.

The future destiny of this general is equally interesting, or possibly sensational. After his military retirement, he lived in Konstancin, a villa that had previously belonged to the Home Office and had secret status. In 2019, TVN24 revealed that Janiszewski did not sit on the bench of the defendants of the martial law, as in July 2007 the Institute of National Memory recognized him as dead during the first regulation of the Law and Justice. Moreover, the public prosecutors gave information to the media, and even obituaries appeared in the press. Meanwhile, the general died only 9 years later. The investigation into the authors of the martial law was conducted by D.A. Piotr Friday and he was the 1 who signed the indictment in which he considered Janiszewski to be dead. On what grounds? That could not be explained. The investigation in this case was dropped. The Prosecutor's Office in Gliwice informed in 2020 – i.e. during the second regulation of the Law and Justice and Zbigniew Ziobry in the Ministry of Justice – that the prosecutor's actions resulted from a misconception that the General was dead, not from his intentional action. On what grounds, it is not known. Just as it is not entirely clear why the prosecutor was not held accountable, since the Gliwice investigators found that he had failed.

That Janiszewski did not die, General Jaruzelski spoke at the 2008 trial, and 2 years earlier Janiszewski's wife sent a medical certificate to the IPN that he had suffered a stroke and could not appear before the prosecutor. But the DA Friday didn't even verify it.

Sam, in a conversation with TVN24, sheds a mysterious light on the matter. "I did almost no investigative work in this case. This is mostly my brother," he said, refusing to talk further. The brother is another crucial prosecutor, Przemysław Friday, who served as Deputy Minister of Justice in the government of Jarosław Kaczyński (2006–2007) – he was 1 of Zbigniew Ziobra's deputies (he retired as prosecutor of the national prosecutor). With Przemysław Friday a fewer days after the case was brought to light, reporters of Rzeczpospolita spoke. He said at the time that his brother Peter did not talk to the media, and leaving Janiszewski out in the indictment, he commented: “I do not know why this happened, I am surprised.”

A fragment of the book “Putin's Spies. How the people of the Kremlin take over Poland" by Grzegorz Rodzikowski published by W.A.B. Publishing House. Title, lead and abbreviations from Newsweek.