Paweł Jasienica versus Józef Mackiewicz. Czyja droga donikąd?

Abstract

Paweł Jasienica and Józef Mackiewicz shaped their world outlook in the interwar period in the administrative unit of the Second Polish Republic with its capital in Vilnius. The biggest assets of those terrains were its multi-national, multi-cultural and multi-religious tradition of the Great Duchy of Lithuania. They parted ways along with the beginning of World War II and the choices they made. Jasienica joined the Home Army, Mackiewicz—a zealous anti-communist—began his temporary cooperation with a German periodic publishing anti-Bolshevik content. And it was then where their polemics began. Jasienica replied Mackiewicz in underground press, that every invader—be it Western or Eastern—is as dangerous, and his goal is to destroy us. The Home Army sentenced Józef Mackiewicz to death for collaborating with the Nazi occupying units— the sentence was never carried out.