Society of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy

The Association of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy (Polish Związek Bojowników o Wolność i Demokrację, ZBoWiD ) was the official Polish state-controlled war veterans organization in the People's Republic of Poland.

History

Decisive Franciszek Jóźwiak the organization was founded in 1949 as a merger already since 1945 existing veterans organizations. In the first decades she took mainly on former members of the communist Armia Ludowa and communist partisans and inmates of concentration camps. Since the 1960s, also former members of the non-Communist Home Army ( Armia Krajowa ) from the time of the Second World War were taken.

The Association was one of the member organizations in the National United Front (Front Jedności Narodowej, FJN ). Officially, it was independent of the Polish United Workers' Party, but was in fact controlled by the latter. Its membership was in the 1970s at 330,000 and 1986 at 800,000 members.

Under the chairman Mieczysław Moczar the Association played a significant domestic political role in the 1960s. He set a strong foundation in the power struggle against Wladyslaw Gomulka dar. This led anti-Semitic and nationalist slogans emigration of thousands of Jews still living in Poland. Only when Gomulka the Prague Spring unreservedly condemned and Leonid Brezhnev supported him again failed this power struggle. In 1971 Moczar had the leadership of the association with Wojciech Jaruzelski share first, before this completely supplanted him in 1983 by the leadership. The reasoning was that Poland could not make the 40th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as a compromised anti-Semites at the forefront of resistance veterans. The make, especially in the Western world, a bad impression.

1990 ZBoWiD in Związek Kombatantów Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej i Byłych Więźniów Politycznych (Association of Combatants of the Republic of Poland and the former political prisoners) was converted.