The body of Stanislaw Pyjas, who died in 1977, probably at the hands of communist secret services, is to be exhumed to ascertain the real cause of his death.

The Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) wants to clear up doubts as to the circumstances of Stanislaw Pyjas’s death, who, according to communist authorities’ statements at the time, died from injuries sustained in a drunken fall down the stairs, but most probably was killed by, or on the orders of, the communist security services.

“Maybe the autopsy will help find new evidence and push forward the investigation which had come to a standstill,” said journalist Bronislaw Wildstein, Pyjas’s friend.

Justice Minister Krzysztof Kwiatkowski assures that if the autopsy proves that Pyjas was murdered by communist secret services and people responsible for killing him are still alive, they will be brought to justice.

Stanislaw Pyjas was a Jagiellonian University student and sympathiser of the Workers’ Defence Committee (KOR) a democratic opposition movement and precursor of the Solidarity trade union movement. The 24-year-old Pyjas’ body was found on 7 May 1977 in the staircase of a Krakow apartment house.

Investigations into the Pyjas murder were dropped four times due to lack of evidence.

In February, the remains of Krzysztof Olewnik, who was murdered in 2003, was also exhumed after family members became convinced that the body buried a grave in Gdansk was not actually his. DNA tests proved these fears to be unfounded.

And in 2008, the remains of WW II leader-in-exile General Wladyslaw Sikorski was taken out of its marbled tomb in Krakow, also at the request of the IPN, to discover the true circumstance of his death. After tests it was concluded that the manner of his death was consistent with a plane crash and not assassination, as had been theorized by many in the decades since his demise in 1943. (mg/pg)