Trybun ludowy. Rzecz o Józefie Putku
The People's Trybune. The Matter of Józef Putek

Summary/Abstract: Józef Aleksy Putek, Juris Doctor, (1892-1974) was a well-known peasant activist during the interwar period. He had been involved in the peasant movement since his school years, when he attended the Wadowice gymnasium. After the end of the First World War, he held a seat in the Seym for several terms (1919-1930 and 1938-1939) and came to be known as an excellent parliamentar.He also worked in local government, acting as of Vogt in Chocznia (1919-1929).During the interwar period he was active in several peasant parties, taking on highparty functions in the Polish Leftist Peasant's Party, the Polish Liberation Peasant Party, and the Peasant Party. He was a fierce critic of the Church and its position in the nation, and a conflict with the parson in Chocznia led to his being punished byan interdict (1928). He was imprisoned by the Sanation government in the fortress of Brzesko, and was tried and sentenced to one of the harshest punishments, part of which he served in the prison in Wadowice. As an attorney he was involved in the defence Emil Zegadłowicz’s novel “Motory”, which had been confiscated by the censors. During the occupation he was imprisoned in the Montelupi prison in Kraków, in Wiśnicz and in the Auschwitz and Mauthausen concentration camps, where he took part in the camps’ underground resistance. After the war, Dr. Jur. joined the leadership of the pro-Communist Peasant Party, and was a delegate to the National Council and the Legislative Seym (1945-1951) and was Post and Telegraph Minister. He was arrested under suspicion of collaboration with the Sanation regime, and spent three years in the Montelupi and Mokotów prisons without trialor sentence. After his release from prison he worked for several years as an attorney. Beginning in 1958, partially paralysed due to a stroke, he remained permanentlyin his home. Dr. Jur. wrote several dozen of publications and pamphlets, mostinfamously the provocative and anticlerical “The Darkness of the Middle Ages” and numerous works on the history of the region and the Polish countryside.

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