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Józef Cyrankiewicz (April 23, 1911 - January 20, 1989) was a Polish communist political figure. He served as premier of the People's Republic of Poland between 1947 and 1952, and again between 1954 and 1970. He served as head of state of Poland from 1970 to 1972.
Born in Tarnów, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Cyrankiewicz attended Kraków's Jagiellonian University. He became the secretary of the local branch of the Polish Socialist Party in 1935.
World War II
Active in the Armia Krajowa, the Polish resistance, since the start of World War II, Cyrankiewicz was captured by the Wehrmacht in the autumn of 1942 and sent to Auschwitz. He arrived on September 4, 1942, and received registration number 62,993.
Working closely with another prisoner, Witold Pilecki, against whom he later testified in a Communist court leading to Pilecki's death, Cyrankiewicz organised a mass breakout. By the end of the year, they had 500 prisoners ready to overthrow the guards. However, a few inmates escaped by themselves on December 29, and a dentist captured by the Gestapo and the plan was ruined. Pilecki escaped by feigning typhus and then running away from the hospital, but Cyrankiewicz would stay in camps for the rest of the war. After being transferred to Mauthausen, Cyrankiewicz was eventually liberated by the US Army.
Rise to power
Following the end of the war, he became secretary-general of the Polish Socialist Party's central executive committee in 1946, and the following year, became premier. However, soon there was factional infighting in the Party and eventually it split in two: one faction lead by Cyrankiewicz, the other by Edward Osóbka-Morawski, who was also the head of the Polish government.
Osóbka-Morawski thought that the PSP should join with the other non-communist party in Poland, the Polish Peasant Party, to form a united front against communism.
Cyrankiewicz argued that the PSP should support the communists (who held most of the posts in the government) in carrying through a socialist programme, while opposing the imposition of one party rule. The communists played on this division in the PSP, dismissing Osóbka-Morawski and making Cyrankiewicz prime minister of the country.
Upon the formal merger of the Polish Socialist and Communist Parties in 1948, Cyrankiewicz was named secretary of the central committee of the new Polish United Workers' Party.
See also
| Preceded by: Edward Osóbka-Morawski | Prime Minister of Poland 1947–1952 | Succeeded by: Boleslaw Bierut |
| Preceded by: Boleslaw Bierut | Prime Minister of Poland 1954–1970 | Succeeded by: Piotr Jaroszewicz |
| Preceded by: Marian Spychalski | Chairman of the Polish Council of State 1970–1972 | Succeeded by: Henryk Jablonski |