Reakcje na zabójstwo księdza Jerzego Popiełuszki

Na podstawie wybranych dokumentów Komitetu Krakowskiego PZPR i tekstów "Gazety Krakowskiej" (1984-1985)

Abstrakt

The murder of priest Jerzy Popiełuszko, perpetrated by the officers of the Security Service [Służba Bezpieczeństwa], had far-reaching social and political consequences in the People’s Republic of Poland. The perpetrators’ trial was of equal importance. The trial was staged by the communist authorities in such a way that those who commissioned the murder could not be traced.
The article aims at analysing, on a few examples, how the priest Popieluszko’s murder was received and what the far-reaching repercussions were, from the perspective of opinions by selected people from the Krakow region.
The intentions of the Krakow Committee of the PZPR’s authorities who worked to ‘cover up the Popieluszko case’, as stated in one of the acts, are presented on the basis of selected archives. The first part of the article presents examples of the society’s reactions to the kidnapping and assassination of ‘Solidarity’s’ chaplain and the progress of his killers’ trial, the information gathered among the residents of the province by the order of the communist authorities.
The second part of the article contains a brief analysis of the selected texts published in “Gazeta Krakowska”, associated with the aforementioned issue. The majority of these texts were submitted from the head office of the PZPR via the Polish Press Agency [PAP]; they were also statements made by Jerzy Urban, the communist government spokesperson. However, the editors of this party-endorsed daily newspaper also had their own ‘original’ contribution to propaganda attacks directed against priest J. Popieluszko (the articles by Stanislaw Stanuch).