Anniversary of the unsuccessful assassination of the president of Poland Stanisław Wojciechowski. The perpetrator was Ukrainian, but the leads led to German intelligence.
Today in our calendar we will look at the circumstances accompanying the effort to kill the Polish head of state.
On 5 September 1924, president Wojciechowski arrived by rail in Lviv. Then the open carriage headed towards the seat of the east Fair, which he intended to visit. At the confluence of the streets of Copernicus and Legions, a bomb was thrown towards the carriage of Wojciechowski, which fell under the wheels of the vehicle. But the bomb didn't blow.
The attack was attempted to cover up so as not to upset activists of the Ukrainian Military Organization and not fuel anti-Polish sentiments among the Ukrainian national minority. The press deliberately ignored the Lviv act of panic and was written about a firecracker (not a bomb) thrown towards a presidential carriage. “Gazeta Lwowska” mentioned only “an effort to disrupt the celebration” with the participation of the president of Poland and the Warsaw “Illustrated Tygodnik” did not mention the assassination effort at all.
The bomber turned out to be Ukrainian nationalist 19-year-old Teofil Olszewski, but this was revealed a fewer months later. First, a hebrew with a German passport, Stanisław Steiger, was arrested in this case. He was pointed out by Lvov's resident, Maria Pasternakin, who was most likely in collusion with the bombers and was intended to confuse the leads.
The trial of Steiger and his alleged associates: Mikołaj Mykietyn, Ignacy Jäger, Ignacy Kornhaber, Jan Dwornicki, Maks Glaserman, started immediately, as early as 15 September 1924. However, evidence was lacking. Very quickly, the German press compared the trial to the Dreyfus case in France. Eventually, the case had to be dropped. Meanwhile, the real bomber - Teofil Olszewski - decided to flee the country through a forest close Bytomia in advanced Silesia.
German border services captured him and brought him to justice for illegally crossing the border. The conviction was: 2 weeks in prison suspended for 1 year. Teofil Olszewski immediately took the chance to apply to the German authorities for political exile status. Friendships aimed at Ukrainians Germany's aforementioned position granted legal settlement in Malbork.
In early 1925 Polish authorities began to fishy Teofila Olszewski of participating in the assassination. The case became media, but nobody knew where the bomber was. Germany did not quash to uncover the whereabouts of the Ukrainian, but after an interpelling of 1 of the Members of the Prussian Parliament, who most likely learned about the substance from the Polish press, Olszewski's presence in German territory could not be further covered up.
The German press began to complain about the destiny of “persecuted” by Polish authorities, Ukrainians. Meanwhile, the Polish MFA powerfully applied to Berlin for the bomber's file, which Germany, after a long delay, sent to Warsaw. They were incomplete, but it was inactive evident from them that the perpetrator was Teofil Olszewski, and the assassination was carried out at the orders of the Ukrainian Military Organization (UOW).
As he stated, Ukrainian militants are guided by the rule of reacting aggressively to all appearance of the president of the Republic of Poland on Ukrainian land and on specified land, according to the UOW, lay the Lviv.
The Germans never revealed Olszewski's full testimony, nor did they release it to the Polish authorities. The case was lost in May 1926 erstwhile Józef Piłsudski he committed a coup and overthrow president Wojciechowski.
Historians present have no uncertainty that the assassination of the president was part of a larger game that was going on between Poland, Germany and the Ukrainian terrorist underground that Germany supported politically and financially. Many threads of this conflict stay a mystery.
Previous entry from our calendar is available Here.
