BISKUP KIELECKI CZESŁAW KACZMAREK (1895–1963) W WYBRANYCH DOKUMENTACH MIECHOWSKIEGO APARATU BEZPIECZEŃSTWA Z 1961 ROKU
COMMUNIST APPARATUS OF REPRESSION, PRL, CATHOLIC CHURCH, KIELCE DIOCESE, MIECHÓW DEANERY, BISHOP CZESŁAW KACZMAREK, SOURCE EDITION, 1961

Summary/Abstract: In the years 1938-1963, Fr. Dr. Czesław Kaczmarek was the Ordinary of theKielce diocese, whose Miechów deanery is located in the Krakow area. His pastoral care for the diocese was at an extremely difficult time – the Second WorldWar and the communist period in Poland. After being released from a prisonterm which was the result of the proceedings taken by the communist apparatusof the PZPR, and with his final return to Kielce in 1957, the church hierarchywas constantly under surveillance and perceived as the enemy of communism.Every step and every word of the bishop was diligently recorded by the security apparatus and reported to superiors. From archival reports of the securityservices kept at the Institute of National Remembrance come three documentsfrom 1961 concerning Bishop Kaczmarek’s time in Miechów, which are edited inthis article. On the one hand, there emerges from them the straightforwardnessand genuine concern of the bishop for his particular church, and on the other,the ruthlessness of the communist apparatus of repression and the strenuousstruggle for the atheization of the Polish nation and the efforts to subordinatethe Catholic Church to the totalitarian ideology of Marxism-Leninism.

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