Józef Mackiewicz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Józef Mackiewicz (April 1, 1902 – January 31, 1985) was a prominent Polish language writer and publicist. He was an enthusiastic anti-Communist, but during his life Mackiewicz was attacked by the right as well as by the left[citation needed]. The Polish nationalists hated him for desecrating Polish national values[citation needed]. In fact, Mackiewicz was an enemy of narrow ethnic nationalism[citation needed]: he regarded himself as a citizen of the multinational Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Jozef Mackiewicz was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia. In 1907 his family moved back to Vilnius (Wilno) (now in Lithuania) — his family was Polish-Lithuanian gentry. Mackiewicz studied natural sciences and before World War II he worked as a journalist for the Vilnian newspaper, Słowo (The Word). Between October 1939 and May 1940 he was a publisher and editor-in-chief of the Gazeta Codzienna, a Polish language daily in Lithuanian controlled Vilnius. In his articles Mackiewicz tried to start a dialog between Lithuanians and Lithuanian Poles. After the annexation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union, he worked as a laborer. In 1942, he witnessed a of massacre of Jews by Nazis in Ponary - he described this event in his book Nie trzeba glosno mowic (It need not be spoken loudly). In 1943, with consent of the Polish government in exile, he assisted in the first excavations of the mass-graves of the Polish soldiers killed by Soviet NKVD in Katyn in 1940. At some point in time he was sentenced to death for treason by an underground tribunal. This accusation of Mackiewicz being a traitor heavily influenced his perceptions after World War II. Mackiewicz left Poland with his wife in 1945, never to return, and died in exile in Munich, in 1985.
Mackiewicz's prose is extremely realistic: he believed there were no untouchable subjects. In 1957, he published Kontra, a narrative account of the particularly brutal and treacherous handover of thousands of anti-Soviet Cossacks by British soldiers in Austria.
Amongst others he wrote: Droga do nikąd (The Road to Nowhere), Zwyciestwo prowokacji (Victory of provocation), W cieniu krzyza (In the shadow of the cross).
His voluminous output as a writer of fiction and a publicist has been undergoing an unusual revival after many years of marginal interest. His books are however almost unavailable in Poland because of legal issues.
His brother, Stanisław Mackiewicz, was Prime Minister of the Government of Poland in exile from 1954 to 1955.
