Józef Mackiewicz

Józef Mackiewicz (1 April 1902 – 31 January 1985) was a Polish writer, novelist and political commentator; best known for his documentary novels Nie trzeba głośno mówić (One Is Not Supposed to Speak Aloud), and Droga donikąd (The Road to Nowhere).

He staunchly opposed communism, referring to himself as an "anticommunist by nationality".

Mackiewicz died in exile.

His older brother Stanisław Mackiewicz was also a writer.

Józef Mackiewicz was the son of Antoni Mackiewicz and Maria née Pietraszkiewicz originally from Kraków, a Polish noble family from the Polish-Lithuanian gentry of Bożawola coat of arms.

He was born on 1 April 1902 in Saint Petersburg.

In 1907 his family moved to Vilnius.

In 1919, as a 17-year-old volunteer he participated in the Polish–Soviet War, first, as an uhlan of the Polish Army's 10th Lithuanian Uhlan Regiment, and then of the 13th Wilno Uhlan Regiment.

He finished his military service during Poland's fight of independence as an uhlan of the 211th Niemen Volunteer Uhlan Regiment.

Similar to other young veterans of the war who entered university without their Matura graduation, Mackiewicz started his favourite subject of biological sciences at the University of Warsaw and then upon moving to Vilnius continued studies at the Vilnius University, but he never graduated with a degree.

From 1923 he worked as a journalist for Słowo (The Word), a periodical published in Vilnius by his older brother Stanisław and fully sponsored and financed by the old noble families of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Journalist work took him all over the Baltic republics and eastern Poland.

Mackiewicz married Antonina Kopańska with whom he had a daughter Halina, and upon divorce he was in a long-term relationship with Wanda Żyłowska, with whom he had a daughter Idalia.

Then he began his lifelong relationship with a writer and journalist of Vilnius' Słowo Barbara Toporska, but they had no children.

They married in 1939.

On 17 September 1939 Soviet troops attacked eastern Poland as part of the joint German-Soviet Invasion of Poland.

Upon the division of the country by occupying forces, the Vilnius region was transferred to then independent Lithuania.

Mackiewicz remained in the city and between October 1939 and May 1940 was a publisher and editor-in-chief of the Gazeta Codzienna (Daily Paper), a Polish-language daily in Lithuanian-controlled Vilnius.

In his articles, he attempted to initiate a political dialogue between Lithuanians and Poles.

In May 1940, he was forbidden from further role as publisher and journalist by the Lithuanian government.

After the 15 June 1940 invasion and annexation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union, Mackiewicz worked temporarily as a labourer.

Upon consent of the Polish government-in-exile, he assisted in the first excavations of the mass graves of the Polish officers killed by Soviet NKVD there in 1940.

Upon his return to Vilnius, the local German-sponsored daily Goniec Codzienny published an interview with Mackiewicz titled "Widziałem na własne oczy" ("I saw with my own eyes").

During the German occupation of Vilnius in 1941, Mackiewicz was falsely accused of "collaboration" with the Germans.

Mackiewicz believed that a return to the prewar borders of Poland was a pipe-dream and not a useful premise, which some local Poles then considered unthinkable.

However, Mackiewicz was proven correct by later events.

He proclaimed that opposing just one invader, Germany (as did the Polish Resistance), was synonymous with helping the second invader, the Soviet Union, because their intentions were identical.

He believed that opposing communism was more important.

In 1942, he witnessed the Ponary massacre of some 100,000 mostly Polish Jews by German SD, SS and the Lithuanian Nazi collaborators Ypatingasis būrys, which he described in his 1969 book Nie trzeba głośno mówić (One Is Not Supposed to Speak Aloud).

At the end of 1942 (beginning of 1943) he was mistakenly sentenced to death by the resistance, for his work at Gazeta Codzienna and Goniec Codzienny.

The sentence was cancelled out (see below).

In April 1943 Mackiewicz was invited by the international Katyn Commission, headed by German occupying authorities, to the site of Katyn massacre.

He later arrived in Italy where he worked for the II Corps (Poland) and, in this capacity, he edited a compilation of documents related directly to the Katyń Massacre under the title Zbrodnia katyńska w świetle dokumentów (The Katyn murder in light of new evidence), published in 1948 with an introduction by General Władysław Anders.

At the same time he wrote his own book under the title ''Katyń.

Zbrodnia bez sądu i kary'' (Katyn. Murder without Trial nor Sentence).

Its first Polish language publication was destroyed by the publisher in London, UK, for political reasons.

In 1949 he published its German language version, Katyn – ungesühntes Verbrechen, in Zürich, Switzerland.

In 1951 he published the English-version of his book under a title The Katyn Wood Murders, the very first book in English on the subject (Italian version in 1954 as Il Massacro della foresta di Katyn, in Spanish in 1957 as Las Fosas de Katyn, in Russian published in Canada in 1988 as Катынь).

In 1952 he testified before US Senate Committee known as "Select Committee to Investigate and Study the Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre" about the genocidal nature the Katyń Massacre (the Polish version of Katyń. Zbrodnia bez sądu i kary was published in 1997 in Poland, and again under different title: Sprawa mordu katyńskiego. Ta książka była pierwsza in 2009).

Józef Mackiewicz was the younger brother of Stanisław Mackiewicz, a political publicist and Prime Minister of the postwar Polish government in exile from 1954 to 1955; and Seweryna Mackiewicz, mother of Polish writer Kazimierz Orłoś.