Author in court over communist collaboration claims

In the trial Jacek Pszon is defending the name of his late father, Mieczyslaw Pszon (d.1995), who was imprisoned for eight years by the communist regime in 1949 and later became a contributing editor of the progressive Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny.

The Catholic journal was considered a beacon of free speech in the Soviet bloc, with contributors including Pope John Paul II, Nobel Prize-winner Czeslaw Milosz and acclaimed writer Stanislaw Lem.

However, in his 2011 book The Price of Survival: Tygodnik Powszechny and the Secret Services, author Roman Graczyk argued that the weekly had been riddled with informants, thus explaining the publication's endurance. Graczyk had access to secret service files that are monitored today by the state-sponsored Institute of National Remembrance (IPN).

First witness for the prosecution, Professor of Law Jan Widacki - who has not read the book - claimed that such sources cannot be trusted. The prosecution is pushing for an outright ban on the publication of the book. Representatives from the Krakow branch of IPN are due to defend their sources in court.

“I regard this trial as a dispute about the scope of freedom of speech in Poland,” Graczyk stated. “If you are not allowed to write such a book, then a great deal in the historiography of our country will be off limits,” he said.