The spy files tormenting Poland
| By Julia Rooke |
Two decades after the collapse of communism, government plans to throw open the secret police archives could, say some Poles, turn into a witch hunt.
“They said you’ll die in jail, you animal, and your family will starve to death, and then I agreed to work with them.”
The middle-aged man blubbers almost uncontrollably as he admits on Polish prime-time TV how he was once blackmailed by the secret police into betraying his closest friends.
“They led me like a dog on a chain, and I didn’t have the courage or the strength to break free,” he says.
This is Stanislaw Filosek, a leader of the opposition trade union Solidarity at the giant Lenin steel mill in the southern town of Nowa Huta. After the imposition of martial law in 1981, he and his friends went underground.
But their leader was uncovered by the police and jailed.
“I always suspected betrayal,” says Mr Filosek’s friend, Edward Nowak.
Outed in the press
Earlier this year Mr Nowak got permission to see his secret police file. What he discovered made his blood run cold.
| The files are like dynamite and they can explode, they can ruin people’s life today Jan Molka, Solidarity activist turned informer |
“It was Filosek,” he says.
“A trusted friend, a regular in our house. He was being paid to inform on us. When I saw his name, I wept.”
The old friends forced Mr Filosek to go public. Otherwise they say they would have outed him themselves.
It is the absence of a proper legal framework for dealing with the past that has led to a series of ugly outings.
In East Germany many informers were exposed and the majority of civil servants were purged by the West German state which stepped in to help. Poland had no such partner.
Solidarity came to power following a negotiated settlement with the communists.
Lech Walesa, Solidarity’s most famous leader and former Polish president, says that although Solidarity won the 1989 elections, the ministries of the interior and defence were still in communist hands. Outing informers would have been too dangerous then.
“The communists were so strong,” he adds.
“We could not start vetting people. A frontal attack on the communists would have ended tragically.”
‘Moral cleansing’
Two years ago, Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party came to power with a promise to morally cleanse the country and expose former collaborators.
According to Wojciech Roszkowsi, a Law and Justice MEP, today people feel betrayed.
He argues that the Polish transformation was little more than a deal to divide the spoils of power unfairly between some Solidarity leaders and communists.
“The communist nomenklatura were given a chance to appropriate state assets,” he says.
“The biggest fortunes were made by former military intelligence officers.”
Solidarity’s greatest heroes strongly deny these claims.
They in turn accuse the identical twins who now run Poland, President Lech Kaczynski and Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, of unleashing a modern-day witch hunt to punish their political rivals.
The centrepiece of their moral cleansing campaign was declared illegal by the Constitutional Court this spring.
The proposed law demanded that people in positions of public responsibility fill in self-vetting forms or be sacked.
However, since the Kaczynski twins came to power there has been a series of informer outings in the popular press.
Persuaded to inform
Maciej Damiecki is a veteran comic actor. He stars in a long-running and much loved soap opera called the Vicarage (Plebania). This spring his world fell apart.
“A young man came to visit me,” he recalls.
“He said he wanted to talk about my past as a communist informer. He had a copy of my secret police file with him. It was a terrible shock.”
After 40 years, Mr Damiecki’s dark secret was out. Splashed all over the newspaper were extracts from his file in which he allegedly denounced fellow thespians.
His story is familiar to those who once lived in a police state. He admits guilt and explains how back in the 1970s he had been caught drink-driving by the police.
“They proposed a deal and in return they’ll give me back licence,” he says.
“They began blackmailing me. They said I’ll be fired from theatre unless I agreed to inform on my colleagues.”
Because he was deemed “guilty”, he was not allowed to see his own file. Finally he did obtain a copy and says that only two of the reports were written by him. The rest, he insists, were fabricated.
The secret police were known for their ability to sow misinformation. Yet ironically, today’s government and its supporters seem to set great store by them.
Now the government – backed by most political parties – are calling for the files to be opened up to wider public scrutiny. But where will all this end?
Jan Molka is a Solidarity activist who turned informer.
He joined the secret police and was rapidly promoted, informing on his then Solidarity colleagues, among them the Kaczynski twins.
If the files are opened, he warns, Poland will go through “hell”:
“The files are like dynamite and they can explode, they can ruin people’s lives today,” he says.
“People are frightened. They implicated millions.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/6913682.stm
一個無關重要的開首: 不記得是哪一年的無線台慶，總之每一年都有全台藝員抽車抽樓的環節。曾志偉宣佈被抽中的十個藝員的名字，其中一個是蓋世寶，即是那個做兒童節目主持、吵吵鬧鬧的姐姐仔呢。曾志偉說:「蓋世寶… 好名呀…蓋世太保。」當時我以為蓋世太寶是個成語甚麼的，但唸了歷史我才驚覺，這個玩笑原來一點也不好笑。
蓋世太保，就是Gestapo的音譯。Gestapo是 Geheime Staatspolizei 的縮寫，是納粹德國時秘密警察的名稱。
從何時開始，秘密警察成了極權國家的「必需品」? 橫掃各大影展的電影 Lives of Others說的，就是秘密警察的故事。一位生活在東德的編劇受到嚴密監察，從事顛覆活動的他卻一直安然無恙。直到圍牆倒下後，翻開自己的檔案，他才驚覺原來監視他的一位秘密警察，竟然處處維護他，沒有揭發他的conspiracy。
今天的德國，真的有這麼的一個Stasi Museum，大家可以在那兒，翻閱自己的檔案，看看秘密警察偷窺了自己多久，知道了些甚麼。看似開明的做法，其實是多麼可怕的事: 如果當時我不知道我被監視，那寧可一世也不知道。
波蘭的做法，似乎披上了更甜卻更毒的糖衣毒藥。早前華沙新上任的主教，因曾為共產政權的線人而下台；鐵幕倒下後，秘密警察依然是人們心中的敏感地帶，為了一洗極權統治的陰霾，嚴打從前跟共產政權有聯繫的份子，彷彿是政治正確的代名詞。
可是，秘密警察雖然不復存在，白色恐怖卻沒有平息。為了「政治正確」 ，一場道德清洗已經展開。今天，政府和公眾都要求公開從前跟秘密警察有聯繫的名單，結果卻沒有令社會變得更開明，猜疑卻是愈來愈多。當年為了苟存，多少人被迫協助秘密警察，出賣自己的好友和家人，他們的心情想必十分難受。二十年快要過去了，也許良心的責傭才剛釋懷，卻要再次面對審判。被監視的人，得知被一直信任的親友出賣，只有跟他們決裂… 一場場的道德煎熬和猜忌，竟然在二十年後無以復加地重演。
無意淡化秘密警察的惡行，只是，我總相信大部分人都是善良的。Hannah Arendt說過，極權政府下的集體恐怖，其實是陳腐的。人們沒有群起反抗它，不是因為人們熱切地想加害別人，而只是出於愚昧，或為了苟且偷生。
如果我知道自己曾被監視，我寧可一世都不知道出賣我的是誰。他們都只是迫不得已。只要汲取了歷史的教訓，承受不來的心理苛責，就不再必要。
