| Józef Mackiewicz | |
|---|---|
Wilno; before 1939 |
|
| Born | April 1, 1902 Sankt Petersburg, Russia |
| Died | January 31, 1985 (aged 82) Munich, Germany |
| Occupation | Novelist |
Józef Mackiewicz (April 1, 1902 – January 31, 1985) was a Polish writer, novelist and political commentator. He staunchly opposed communism, referring to himself as an "anticommunist by nationality". He's best known for his novels Nie trzeba głośno mówić (One Is Not Supposed to Speak Aloud), and Droga donikąd (The Road to Nowhere). He died in exile.
Contents |
Jozef Mackiewicz was born in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire on 1 April 1902 to a Polish family from the Polish-Lithuanian gentry. In 1907 his family moved to Wilno (in Poland from 1918 till 1945, now Vilnius, Lithuania). Mackiewicz studied natural sciences and before World War II worked as a journalist for Słowo (The Word), a newspaper published in Vilnius, then within the borders of the Second Polish Republic. On September 17, 1939 Soviet troops invaded eastern Poland's Kresy and gave Wilno to independent Lithuania. Between October 1939 and May 1940 Mackiewicz was a publisher and editor-in-chief of the Gazeta Codzienna, a Polish language daily in Lithuanian-controlled Vilnius. In his articles, he attempted to initiate a political dialogue between Lithuanians and Poles.
After the annexation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union, Mackiewicz worked temporarily as a labourer. 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).[1] 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).[2] In June 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. Mackiewicz left Poland with his wife in 1945, never to return, and died in exile in Munich, in 1985.
His brother, Stanisław Mackiewicz, was a political publicist and Prime Minister of the Government of Poland in exile from 1954 to 1955.
Mackiewicz's prose is extremely realistic: he believed that there are no untouchable subjects in writing. In 1957, he published Kontra, a narrative account of the particularly brutal and treacherous handover of thousands of anti-Soviet Cossacks by the British soldiers in Austria back to the Soviets. His other best-known novels include: Droga donikąd (The Road to Nowhere), an account of life under Soviet occupation; Zwycięstwo prowokacji (Victory of Provocation) on communism; and, W cieniu krzyża (In the Shadow of the Cross) on Catholicism.
His voluminous output as a writer of fiction and a publicist has been undergoing an unusual revival after many years of underground publishing and later marginal interest. His books however are difficult to get in Poland due to legal issues.
During the German occupation of Wilno in 1941 Mackiewicz was falsely accused of "collaboration" with the Nazis, because of what he wrote and self-published in the local Polish-language newspaper Gazeta Codzienna. In his opinion, the hope for a return to the prewar borders of Poland was a pipe-dream, and not a useful premise – which some local Poles considered unthinkable at the time. However, Mackiewicz was proven correct. He proclaimed that opposing just one invader, i.e. Germany (as did the Polish Resistance), was synonymous with helping the second invader, i.e. the Soviet Union, because their intentions were identical. He believed that opposing communism was of greater importance.[3]
His ridicule of the Polish false hopes was too much for some of his adversaries. He was sentenced to death by an underground tribunal which, in the opinion of Czesław Miłosz, was an irrational decision, because he was not a collaborator.[3] Sometime later, Mackiewicz was cleared of any wrongdoing. It is open to debate, wrote Miłosz, to what extent the popular criticism of his novels was influenced by the Soviet sympathies among his adversaries. The accusations negatively influenced the Polish perceptions of Mackiewicz's work especially following World War II and were exploited by his critics.[3]