The Robin Hood of Podlasie: Jozef Korycki’s Private War with Communism

In 1982, during Martial Law, the communist authorities named as Public Enemy No. 1 not Lech Walesa or any other Solidarity activist but rather Jozef Korycki, a Robin Hood-like figure who was beloved by the locals in his home region of Podlasie. They compared him to Janosik, a Slovak bandit who robbed from the rich to give to the poor. Marek Kaminski and Ernest Szum describe Korycki’s adventures, from his desertion from mandatory military service (when he kidnapped a Russian military officer!), to his days of robbing village mayors and distributing the proceeds among the local farmers, to his dramatic capture and imprisonment in Rakowiecka Prison, where he was admired by his fellow prisoners and eventually died.

Korycki told Kaminski his life story when the two were in the same prison hospital ward in Rakowiecka. Korycki’s life partner, Krystyna Oksiejuk, provided Kaminski and Szum with detailed testimony on Korycki’s life in hiding during the years of 1979 to 1982. In addition to the narrative of Korycki’s life, Kaminski and Szum also discuss the notions of ideological and social banditry and how Korycki fits into these frameworks, as well as the political history of communist Poland and the tradition of rebelling against foreign occupiers in the Podlasie region of Poland.