http://www.projectinposterum.org/docs/Torture.pdf
or
http://www.projectinposterum.org/docs/chodakiewicz1.htm
Here you can read paper of Professor Marek Jan Chodakiewicz: The Dialectics of Pain[1]: The Interrogation Methods of the Communist Secret Police in Poland, 1944-1955. Glaukopis, vol. 2/3 (2004-2005).
Marek Jan Chodakiewicz is Research Professor of History at the Institute of World Politics: A Graduate School of Statecraft and National Security in Washington, DC. He attended college in California. Having earned his Ph.D. at Columbia University, he taught at several schools in California, including Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Between 2001 and 2003 he was an assistant professor with the Kosciuszko Chair in Polish Studies at the University of Virginia. In April 2005 Chodakiewicz was appointed by President George W. Bush for a 5-year term to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. He is the author and editor of numerous historical monographs, documentary collections, and scholarly articles on Poland’s past. His latest works include Between Nazis and Soviets: Occupation Politics in Poland (2004), and After the Holocaust: Polish-Jewish Relations in the Wake of World War II (2003).
I hope that switching off the subject from blaming soviets for everything wrong during postwar period of history, to their polish helpers, will help our Russian friends understand some feelings which are rather common for all “ex-communist” countries.
"Torture was also the norm when the unfortunates were already serving their jail sentences. According to Mateusz Wyrwich, it still has not been established how many thousands of prisoners, out of 500,000 people who were incarcerated by the Communists between 1944 and 1956, perished because of torture and other forms of maltreatment. For example, over 800 witnesses have appeared to testify about torture in the Wronki prison, where, between 1945 and 1956, about 15,500 people were incarcerated, mostly political prisoners. Victims were routinely made to strip and wait in the prison yard, winter time included. Then, they were chased between two rows of wardens who beat them with truncheons and keys. The functionaries most responsible for the torture were the prison head Jan Boguwola, and his underlings: Adam Serwata, Wiktor Urbaniak, Józef Mikołajczak, Marian Kraus, Jerzy Białas, Marian Dusik, Tomasz Nowicki, and Jan Szymczak.
Torture was an integral part of Poland’s totalitarian reality. It was fully harmonized with the “legal” system and reflected in the official propaganda."
"No law explicitly permitted torturing anyone under Communism. However, between 1944 and 1956, the laws and regulations commonly applied against political offenders were utterly dehumanizing and, hence, implicitly encouraged their abuse, including torture. Two types of distinct legal systems functioned at the time: the Soviet and the Polish. The former applied not only in Poland’s eastern territories incorporated into the Soviet Union after the return of the Red Army in 1944, but also to the west of the so-called Curzon line, wherever the Soviet terror apparatus (and judiciary) happened to operate. While at the mercy of the NKVD, most commonly, the political offenders were charged under the infamous Article 58 of the Soviet penal code. According to Article 58, a Home Army soldier, who was ethnically Polish, born in pre-war Poland, and a life-long citizen of Poland could be sentenced as “traitor to the Soviet Motherland” in addition to being a “counter-revolutionary,” “Hitlerite collaborator,” and “fascist.”
"Marek Jan Chodakiewicz: The Dialectics of Pain: The Interrogation Methods of the Communist Secret Police in Poland, 1944-1955. Glaukopis, vol. 2/3 (2004-2005).
Part II
Torture was also the norm when the unfortunates were already serving their jail sentences. According to Mateusz Wyrwich, it still has not been established how many thousands of prisoners, out of 500,000 people who were incarcerated by the Communists between 1944 and 1956, perished because of torture and other forms of maltreatment.[32] For example, over 800 witnesses have appeared to testify about torture in the Wronki prison, where, between 1945 and 1956, about 15,500 people were incarcerated, mostly political prisoners. Victims were routinely made to strip and wait in the prison yard, winter time included. Then, they were chased between two rows of wardens who beat them with truncheons and keys. The functionaries most responsible for the torture were the prison head Jan Boguwola, and his underlings: Adam Serwata, Wiktor Urbaniak, Józef Mikołajczak, Marian Kraus, Jerzy Białas, Marian Dusik, Tomasz Nowicki, and Jan Szymczak.[33]
Torture was an integral part of Poland’s totalitarian reality. It was fully harmonized with the “legal” system and reflected in the official propaganda.[34]
The Legal Basis of Torture and the Communist Propaganda
No law explicitly permitted torturing anyone under Communism. However, between 1944 and 1956, the laws and regulations[35] commonly applied against political offenders were utterly dehumanizing and, hence, implicitly encouraged their abuse, including torture. Two types of distinct legal systems functioned at the time: the Soviet and the Polish. The former applied not only in Poland’s eastern territories incorporated into the Soviet Union after the return of the Red Army in 1944, but also to the west of the so-called Curzon line, wherever the Soviet terror apparatus (and judiciary) happened to operate. While at the mercy of the NKVD, most commonly, the political offenders were charged under the infamous Article 58 of the Soviet penal code. According to Article 58, a Home Army soldier, who was ethnically Polish, born in pre-war Poland, and a life-long citizen of Poland could be sentenced as “traitor to the Soviet Motherland” in addition to being a “counter-revolutionary,” “Hitlerite collaborator,” and “fascist.”[36]
In August 1945 the secret police arrested Captain Kazimierz Moczarski, who served in the Home Army during the Nazi occupation and afterward in one of its clandestine successors, the Delegation of the Armed Forces (Delegatura Sił Zbrojnych – DSZ). Moczarski was also a liberal and a leader of the center-leftist Democratic Party (Stronnictwo Demokratyczne – SD). As Moczarski recalled, UB Colonel Józef Goldberg, aka Jacek Różański, “told me that… I would go through a ‘hellish interrogation’ – which really happened later.” Różański threatened the victim that he would receive the death penalty. He also explained that “we can always prove that you were a Gestapo agent because we have the blank originals of the official stationery of the Gestapo, their rubber stamps, and the like. We also are holding such former Gestapo members who will very gladly sign a post-dated file prepared by us that you were a Gestapo agent.” Although Moczarski was tortured horribly, he refused to confess his “crimes” but was nonetheless sentenced to death.
Subsequently, Moczarski enumerated forty-nine different types of torture he was subjected to by eight officers of the UB during the interrogation which lasted from November 30, 1948, to September 22, 1952. The torture included beating with a nightstick, a piece of wire, and a metal rod on Moczarski’s throat, nose, fingers, and feet; tearing out his hair (from his genitals, beard, head, and chest); burning him with cigarettes and candles (on his lips, eyes, and fingers); crushing his toes with jackboots; kicking his entire body; stabbing him with needles; injuring his rectum with a screw and a stool leg; forcing the prisoner to do sit-ups until he fainted; forcing the prisoner to run up and down the stairs for long periods of time; locking him naked in solitary confinement; depriving him of sleep for up to 9 days at a stretch and preventing him from falling asleep by periodically slapping his face; forcing him to stand at attention for hours with his hands raised; and depriving him of food and drink for days. Physical torture was accompanied by psychological torment. It included depriving Moczarski of any contact with his family; informing him alternately that his wife “whom…[he] loved very much” was either dead or cheating on him; writing on the forehead of this famous anti-Nazi fighter the word “Gestapo”; and, finally, locking him in a cell for almost a year with Gestapo men, including SS-General Jürgen Stroop, the executioner of the Warsaw ghetto. All these and other methods were employed to force Moczarski to talk."
