Stefan Michnik


Stefan Michnik, is a former Stalinist military judge of the Soviet-dominated regime in post-World War II Poland, and a former captain in the communist Polish People's Army. He was involved in the politically-motivated arrest, trial, imprisonment and/or execution of a number Polish anti-communist fighters and activists. Many of those persecuted by Michnik also fought against Nazi Germany during World War II, as members of the Polish resistance.
After de-stalinization, Michnik went into exile in 1968, and has lived in Storvreta, Sweden.
After the collapse of communism in Poland, Michnik was formally implicated by the Polish justice system in zbrodnie komunistyczne relating to his tenure as a military judge.

Life

Stefan Michnik was the son of Helena Michnik and Samuel Rosenbusch nicknamed "Emil" or "Miłek". His mother was a Polish-Jewish teacher in Drohobycz and an activist for the Communist Party of Western Ukraine, the Communist Party of Poland, and the Stalinist Union of Polish Patriots. His father was a Jewish lawyer and communist activist, executed around 1937 in the Soviet Union during the Great Purge.
Michnik's half-brother is Adam Michnik, the editor-in-chief of the Polish newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza.

Judicial career

Michnik became a judge in postwar Poland after completing an eight-month course for military judges in Jelenia Góra. He was first recruited by the Information Bureau under the pseudonym Kazimierczak but fired 11 months later, and was given severance pay of 1,000 zloty.
At the beginning of 1951 Michnik was assigned a position with the Warsaw Regional Military Court and two weeks later imposed his first sentence against Stanisław Bronarski, charged with anticommunist activities, while he was a member of the AK, NSZ and NZW. Bronarski was given five consecutive death sentences and executed on 18 January 1951 at the Mokotów Prison. Michnik took part in the Trial of the Generals, dubbed a judicial murder by historians, with 40 death sentences pronounced in the fall of 1951, half of them carried out.

Emigration

After being denied a US visa, Michnik fled Poland for Sweden during 1968 Polish political crisis. He lived as a retired librarian in a small town of Storvreta near Uppsala. He is currently in a nursing home in Gothenburg.
He was a contributor to Culture, Polish-émigré literary-political magazine, for which he wrote articles both as Karol Szwedowicz and under his own name.
Since August 2007 the Polish Institute of National Remembrance deliberated on a motion to request his extradition. On 25 February 2010, the Military Garrison Court in Warsaw at the request of the investigation division of the IPN issued an official arrest warrant for Stefan Michnik. In October 2010, Polish prosecutors issued a European Arrest Warrant on the same basis. On 18 November 2010, the court in Uppsala refused to extradite Stefan Michnik back to Poland explaining that his alleged criminal acts committed in Poland fall outside the statute of limitations in Sweden.
On 8 November 2018, the Military Court in Warsaw issued for the second time a European Arrest Warrant in connection with 30 offences that Michnik committed in the years 1952–53 against representatives of the democratic opposition and former members of the Underground State, including unlawful death sentences. Michnik has claimed that he wasn't aware of the death sentences, who, according to him, was a decision made higher up in the judicial hierarchy. A Swedish court in Gothenburg refused Poland's appeal for the extradition of Stefan Michnik.