Biskup kielecki Czesław Kaczmarek (1895–1963) w wybranych dokumentach miechowskiego Aparatu Bezpieczeństwa z 1961 roku

Abstract

In the years 1938-1963, Fr. Dr. Czesław Kaczmarek was the Ordinary of the Kielce diocese, whose Miechów deanery is located in the Krakow area. His pastoral care for the diocese was at an extremely difficult time – the Second World War and the communist period in Poland. After being released from a prison term which was the result of the proceedings taken by the communist apparatus of the PZPR, and with his final return to Kielce in 1957, the church hierarchy was 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 security services kept at the Institute of National Remembrance come three documents from 1961 concerning Bishop Kaczmarek’s time in Miechów, which are edited in this article. On the one hand, there emerges from them the straightforwardness and genuine concern of the bishop for his particular church, and on the other, the ruthlessness of the communist apparatus of repression and the strenuous struggle for the atheization of the Polish nation and the efforts to subordinate the Catholic Church to the totalitarian ideology of Marxism-Leninism.