Keeping a former communist informer on the pay role of the Gazeta Wyborcza daily was a ‘humanitarian act’ says the paper’s vice editor-in-chief.

Jaroslaw Kurski, vice editor-in-chief of Poland’s largest daily Gazeta Wyborcza is convinced that the newspaper fell victim to Leslaw Maleszka, until recently its prominent editor and journalist, but also a 1970s an informer for the communist secret services.

“Maleszka hid his past from us. He was leading a double life and exposed us to this nightmare. So in a sense, we are also his victims,” said Jaroslaw Kurski in an interview for Radio ZET yesterday.

In 2001, it transpired that communist agents had enrolled Maleszka as a secret informer in the mid 1970s and he remained an active source of information until the 1980s, receiving generous remuneration for his services. 

However, it was not until the documentary film Three Mates produced by private television TVN, broadcast last week, that Leslaw Maleszka was sacked from the editorial staff of Gazeta Wyborcza.

The documentary tells the story of a friendship among three students from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, ardent anti-Communist activists in 1970s and well-known public figures today: Leslaw Maleszka, journalist Bronislaw Wildstein, freelance author, and former CEO of the Polish state-owned television and Stanislaw Pyjas, a poet, who was later brutally murdered by the Communist militia in Krakow in 1977.

“Maleszka’s employment in our editorial staff since 2001 was a humanitarian act by us. The management of the daily condemned Maleszka in a special announcement. The fact that he worked for us [post 2001]was not a sign of acceptance of what he did,” said Kurski.

“The people in Gazeta Wyborcza also have their life stories [from communist times], some were imprisoned, some worked for underground movements, for the opposition and employing Maleszka was not an easy decision for us,” Kurski explained.

According to Kurski, Maleszka was dismissed from Gazeta Wyborcza because he broke a contractual agreement with the daily. He said that in the Three Mates documentary Maleszka introduced himself as a person influencing the editorial line of the paper, which absolutely wasn’t true, says Kurski.

To Kurski, Maleszka is a tragic figure and he finds it hard to condemn him explicitly. He added that the speculation that Maleszka had something to do with the murder of his friend Stanislaw Pyjas should be investigated by relevant state authorities.

“There are some voices in Poland suggesting that Stanislaw Pyjas had to die, because he might have suspected Maleszka of collaboration,” said the newspaper’s vice editor.