Newly released documents from the archives of Poland’s former
Communist regime show that secret police conducted a campaign to destroy
the reputation of the late Archbishop Ignacy Tokarczuk of Przemysl, the
chaplain of the Solidarity movement. Polish police cooperated with the Soviet agency, the KGB, to produce false documents that purportedly showed the archbishop, as a young priest, had cooperated with the Gestapo to identify Communists who were then tortured and killed by the Nazi regime.
The forged documents were used as the basis for a sensational report, published in a Sicilian magazine that was subsequently shown to be controlled by the KGB.
After the publication of the false charges in 1980, Archbishop Tokarczuk came under intense public criticism, and the Polish government opened an investigation into his past conduct.
The archbishop eventually weathered the storm, and held his post until he resigned in 1993 at the age of 75. He died in 2012.