Wojciech Jaruzelski - Early Life and Military Career

Early Life and Military Career

Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski was born on 6 July 1923 in Kurów, into a family of gentry. He was raised on the family estate near Wysokie (in the vicinity of Białystok). He was educated in a Catholic school during the 1930s.

On 1 September 1939, the September Campaign started when Poland was invaded by Germany, with the latter country aided by another invasion begun sixteen days later by the Soviet Union. The invasions resulted in the defeat of Poland by the following month, and its partition between Soviet and German control. Jaruzelski and his family fled to Lithuania and stayed with some friends there. However, a few months later, after Lithuania and the other Baltic states were forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union, Jaruzelski and his family were captured by the army of the Soviet Union, and deported to Siberia. In 1940 at the age of sixteen, Jaruzelski was sent to the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, where he performed forced labour in the Karaganda coal mines. During his labour work, having experienced snow blindness, developed permanent damage to his eyes and back. The damage to his eyes forced him to wear dark sunglasses most of the time, which became his trademark.

Jaruzelski's father died in 1942 from dysentery. His mother and sister survived the war (mother died in 1966). Jaruzelski was selected for enrollment into the Soviet Officer Training School by the Soviet authorities. During his time in the Kazakh Republic, Jaruzelski wanted to join the non-Soviet controlled Polish exile army led by Władysław Anders, but in 1943, by which time the Soviet Union was fighting in Europe against Germany in the Eastern Front, he joined the Polish army units being formed under Soviet command. He served in the Soviet-sponsored First Polish Army during the war. He participated in the Soviet military takeover of Warsaw and the Battle of Berlin, both of which occurred in 1945. By the time the war ended that year, he had gained the rank of lieutenant. He "further credited himself in Soviet eyes" by engaging in combat with the Polish Home Army, an anti-communist organization, from 1945 to 1947.

After the end of the war, Jaruzelski graduated from the Polish Higher Infantry School, an event which was followed by a graduation from the General Staff Academy. He joined Poland's communist party, the Polish United Workers Party, in 1948 and started to denounce people for the Soviet supervised Main Directorate of Information of the Polish Army using the cover name Wolski. In the first post-war years, he was among the military fighting the Polish anti-communist guerrillas ("cursed soldiers") in the Świętokrzyskie region. A BBC News profile of Jaruzelski says that his career "took off after the departure in 1956 of the Soviet Field Marshal, Konstantin Rokossovsky", who had been Poland's Commander in Chief and Minister of Defence. Jaruzelski became the chief political officer of the Polish armed forces in 1960, its chief of staff in 1964; and he became the Polish Minister of Defense in 1968, four years after he was elected to be a member of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers Party. He participated in an antisemitic campaign in the army, during which more than 1000 Jewish officers were demoted and expelled from the army. Even the non-Jewish minister of defence Marian Spychalski was persecuted and Jaruzelski obtained his post.

In August 1968 General Jaruzelski as the minister of defense ordered the 2nd Army under General Florian Siwicki (of the "LWP" ) to invade Czechoslovakia, resulting in military occupation of northern Czechoslovakia until 11 November 1968 when under his orders and agreements with the Soviet Union his Polish troops were withdrawn and replaced by the Soviet Army. In 1970, he was involved in the successful plot against Władysław Gomułka, which led to the appointment of Edward Gierek as Communist Party General Secretary. There is some question whether he took part in organizing the brutal suppression of striking workers; or whether his orders to the communist military led to massacres in the coastal cities of Gdańsk, Gdynia, Elbląg and Szczecin. As Minister of Defense general Jaruzelski was certainly ultimately responsible for 27,000 troops used against unarmed civilians. He claims that he was circumvented, which is why he never apologized for his involvement, but he had an option of resigning open to him and didn't. Jaruzelski became a candidate member for the Politburo of the Polish United Workers' Party, the chief executive body of the party, obtaining full membership the following year.