AN OPEN LETTER IN THE DEFENCE OF ‘BARABASH’

Dear editors!

Like David fighting against Goliat, we are fighting against the powerful machine of environment of ‘Electoral Newspaper’ which in the Kielce edition allowed for another acute attack on the legendary partisan leader of the detachment of the National Army ‘Wybranieccy’, acting in Świętokrzyskie Mountains during the Second World War – colonel Marian Soltysiak, nicknamed ‘Barabash’.

In the articles edited in this newspaper recently, there are accusations against him and his soldiers of murdering the Jews for only anti-Semite reasons. As the ‘scientific evidences’, the article from the yearly issue ‘Extermination of the Jews’ is used, in which authors accuse soldiers of the National Army and the leader of the detachment, on the basis of protocols of the Security Office from hearings and acts of the Stalin’s process, due to which ‘Barabash’ was sentenced to long-term imprisonment and a death penalty many times before. What may be astonishing, it is a valuable source of credible historical information for the authors of the quoted article. It is not essential that ‘Barabash’ was rehabilitated twice and the Stalin’s process was invalidated.

The environment of the ‘Electoral Newspaper’ uses a 90-year-old soldier of the detachment ‘Barabash’, Henryk Pawelec to make its revelations credible, who, after his return from emigration in 1992 in which he had spent 47 years, waited three years from the death of his leader in 1995 and then he allowed for the first attack against him, reporting alleged cases of murdering the Jews for anti-Semite reasons. At that time he met a deserved reaction from combatant environments. Having waited for the time from the death of the last partisan of the detachment ‘Wybranieccy’ in Kielce (May 2011), in July 2011, Pawelec gave his interview to the ‘General Weekly’, calling his leader as a criminal (certainly, towards innocent Jewish people).

The answer to these disgraceful and abominable slanders was a process of Pawelec in the arbitration by fellow-workers, concerning his exclusion from the detachments of the National Army (the verdict excluding was given by the court on 7 February in 2012), and the report of the Institute of National Remembrance about which the family of Sołtysiak had applied for. Having gained it soon, Pawelec is going to have a process in the court.

The result of the lack of de-communization is another history which is shocking and, unfortunately, there many of such histories. What do we need heroes, patriots, legends strengthening the feeling of national pride for? The ‘Electoral Newspaper’ allowed for an attack – before the judicial verdicts and publishing the report of the Institute of National Remembrance – using the old rule of reaching to the public opinion, before the truth is confirmed another time.

The leader Marian Sołtysiak and his detachment ‘Wybranieccy’ are unquestionable legend of Świętokrzyskie Mountains from the times of the Second War and they are very respected by the inhabitants of the province.

I deeply ask for help in publicizing this history, one of many histories in the People’s Polish Republic and, unfortunately, also today.

Yours faithfully – Małgorzata Sołtysiak, niece of ‘Barabash’, the chairman of the Catholic Intelligence Club in Kielce

(AA)

"Niedziela" 10/2012

Editor: Tygodnik Katolicki "Niedziela", ul. 3 Maja 12, 42-200 Czestochowa, Polska
Editor-in-chief: Fr Jaroslaw Grabowski • E-mail: redakcja@niedziela.pl