Grzegorz Przemyk

Grzegorz Przemyk (17 May 1964 – 14 May 1983) was an aspiring Polish poet from Warsaw, who was murdered by members of the Communist police force, the Milicja Obywatelska (Citizens' Militia). His killing was one of many such politically motivated murders perpetrated against democratic opposition by the Communist regime of Poland during the martial law period.

Beating and death Grzegorz Przemyk was the only child of Barbara Sadowska and they lived together in what was described as "a tiny flat on the eleventh floor of a tower block in the centre of Warsaw".

His mother, Barbara Sadowska, who was a poet and a member of the Workers' Defence Committee, was frequently arrested and questioned by the Polish Secret Service (Służba Bezpieczeństwa, SB) for her activities in the opposition movement. On several occasions officers questioning her made various threats, including suggestions that her only son, Grzegorz, might be hurt in an accident. The last time she was questioned before the incident was at the end of April 1983.

12 May 1983 was the day of Grzegorz's graduation from high school, as well as the anniversary of death of Józef Piłsudski, a statesman and leader of the Second Polish Republic, considered a class enemy by the communist authorities. Celebration of this date was illegal in Poland and always a cause for concern by the police and the SB.

Around 3 p.m., Grzegorz Przemyk and his friends, Cezary Filozof, , Igor Bieliński, and Kuba Kotański, left together to celebrate their graduation at Castle Square in Warsaw's Old Town. Przemyk jumped on the shoulders of the much shorter Filozof, and they both fell onto the sidewalk after taking a few steps. This attracted the attention of a nearby police car and ZOMO officers. Shortly after, Filozof and Przemyk were stopped by the policeman Ireneusz Kościuk, who demanded their identity documents. As they denied, Kościuk called for a police car and forced them inside while beating them with a rubber baton. Kuba and Piotr, who witnessed the events from distance, separated. Piotr ran home to notify Przemyk's mother, and Kotański followed the car to a nearby police station. Standing outside, he heard Przemyk howling in pain as he was being beaten. Filozof was with Przemyk the whole time and witnessed two policemen, Kościuk and Krzysztof Dalmata, beating him with a baton. Arkadiusz Denkiewicz, who was the duty officer at the time, came to the room and complained about the noise, instructing them to beat Przemyk more quietly, preferably in the stomach. Dalmata then held Przemyk's arms behind his back, while Bogusław Bielec struck him in the stomach with his elbow until Przemyk fell unconscious.

The policemen called an ambulance around 6 p.m., reporting that a "drug addict" required treatment at a psychiatric hospital. They said that Przemyk was feigning illness in order to leave the police station.

Relationship with Popiełuszko murder Shortly after, in October 1984, priest Jerzy Popiełuszko was murdered by Grzegorz Piotrowski, an officer of the SB Secret Service. Mieczysław Rakowski made a note in his personal diary on that subject that the acquittal of the policemen "might have only encouraged Piotrowski and his friends".

Repeated investigations and trial at the Institute of National Remembrance Przemyk's investigation was restarted in 1993 after the fall of communism with his father Leopold Przemyk as subsidiary prosecutor. The case against the policemen dragged on for years and in 2010, after a number of appeals, it was eventually remitted due to expiration, leaving Arkadiusz Denkiewicz as the only convict. Leopold Przemyk filed a case then with European Court of Human Rights, which in 2013 decided that none of the Poland's investigations in this case were intentionally delayed. In 1998, another investigation against Czesław Kiszczak was started by the Institute of National Remembrance for interfering with the original investigation from 1983. This prosecution collected a large amount of evidence, but the case was also eventually remitted in 2012 after years of legal battles.

Legacy On 3 May 2008 Przemyk was posthumously awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, by the late President of Poland, Lech Kaczyński.

The song "Over My Dead Body" from the 1984 album "Meltdown" from Christian recording artist Steve Taylor was dedicated to the memory of Grzegorz Przemyk.

A film about Przemyk's death, Leave No Traces, was released on 21 September 2021.