Stanisław Piasecki

Stanisław Piasecki (15 December 1900 – 12 June 1941) was a Polish right-wing activist, politician and journalist of partially Jewish descent. thumb

Piasecki was born on 15 December 1900 in Lwów, Austrian Galicia. He was the son of scouting activist Eugeniusz Piasecki and Gizela Siberfeld, a daughter from a wealthy Jewish family, who converted to Catholic faith during the wedding and took the name Maria Piasecka He was related to the athlete Jadwiga Wajs. In his late teens, Piasecki fought in the Battle of Lemberg (1918), and the Polish-Ukrainian War. He also fought in the Polish-Soviet War of 1920–21 as a volunteer.

In the 1920s, he studied architecture at University of Jan Kazimierz in Lwow, and law at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. He also was a member of the right-wing student organization Academic Union All-Polish Youth. In 1935, Piasecki founded his own literary weekly magazine, Prosto z mostu, which presented Polish right-wing publicists and writers. His ambition was to create a right-wing alternative to the liberal magazine Wiadomosci Literackie.The journal has been described as antisemitic and pro-Nazi, but by spring 1939 Piasecki begun criticizing Nazism pointing out its moral contradictions and ideological conflicts, as well as moral crisis

His Jewish background was a source of ridicule among critics, who used it to criticize or explain his antisemitic views

In September 1939, during the Invasion of Poland, he volunteered to the Polish Army. He was so shocked by the German atrocities that he repented his previous antisemitism Piasecki continued publishing anti-Jewish texts also following the German occupation, in June 1940 he published article in the Polish National Democracy underground newspaper Walka titled "Gubernia Generalna — Paradisus Judaeorum" (The General Government — Paradisus Judaeorum) in which he stated that:Blockquote The Jews are clearly overprivileged by the German anti-Semitic racists. The armband with the Star of David has become a badge that protects them from being caught and forced to slave labour. The Jews are not kidnapped from the streets, or transported to the Reich. The Jewish Ghetto has no reason to complain about the occupation. — Stanisław Piasecki, Walka (16 June 1940) The German atrocities following the 1939 invasion of Poland made Piasecki reject his previous antisemitic views.