Roman Romkowski

Roman Romkowski born Menasche Grünspan also known as Nasiek (Natan) Grinszpan-Kikiel, (February 16, 1907 – July 12, 1968) was a Polish communist official trained by Comintern in Moscow. and became second in command (the deputy minister) He was responsible for the work of departments: Counter-espionage (1st), Espionage (7th), Security in the (10th Dept. run by Fejgin), and others.

Work in security services From 1941, he fought in the Soviet partisan unit 'Stalin Brigade' in Belarus, serving as a unit commander, political commissar, and head of intelligence for the Brigade. In 1948, Romkowski was tasked with overseeing the internal party purge against the "right-nationalist deviation" (Gomułka faction). He was promoted to Deputy Minister of Public Security in 1949 and joined the Politburo's Commission for Public Security. In 1949, he was appointed Brigadier General of Public Security. From the same year, he served as Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Public Security. From February 24, 1949, to 1954, he was a member of the Security Commission of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party (KC PZPR), which supervised the apparatus of Stalinist repression in Poland.

Romkowski directly supervised investigations and interrogations of suspected party members, including the arrest and questioning of Władysław Gomułka in 1951-1952. His career began to unravel in late 1953 after the defection of his close associate Józef Światło to the West Germany. Światło's revelations about the regime's inner workings in 1954 led to Romkowski's downfall and the restructuring of the security apparatus. Historian Heather Laskey alleges that it was probably not a coincidence that the high ranking Stalinist security officers put on trial by Gomułka were nowrap|Jews. and was released three years later.

The court proceedings At trial, Col. Różański didn't deny that he routinely tortured prisoners including Polish United Workers' Party members, and he didn't apologize for his actions. Instead, he pointed a finger at Romkowski and continuously repeated the Leninist argument that "the end justifies the means". For him, torturing people was a daily double-shift job, nothing more, nothing less. He admitted that all charges against his victims were falsified on site by his department.

The court announced that the actions of Roman Romkowski and his Ministry demoralised the Party as much as its own functionaries. Jakub Berman, the chief supervisor of State Security Services incriminated by Józef Światło who defected to the West, resigned from his Politburo post in May and was evaluated by the 20th Congress, which launched a process of partial democratisation of Polish political as well as economic life. The number of security agents at the ministry was cut by 22%, and 9,000 socialist and populist politicians were released from prison on top of some 34,644 detainees across the country. "The routing of the Polish Stalinists was indeed complete."

Awards and decorations