Józef Mackiewicz (1 April 1902 – 31 January 1985) was a Polish writer, novelist and political commentator; best known for his documentary novels Nie trzeba głośno mówić (One Is Not Supposed to Speak Aloud), and Droga donikąd (The Road to Nowhere). He staunchly opposed communism, referring to himself as an "anticommunist by nationality". Mackiewicz died in exile. His older brother Stanisław Mackiewicz was also a writer.
Life and career
Józef Mackiewicz was the son of Antoni Mackiewicz and Maria née Pietraszkiewicz originally from Kraków, a Polish noble family from the Polish-Lithuanian gentry of Bożawola coat of arms. He was born on 1 April 1902 in Saint Petersburg. Józef Mackiewicz was the younger brother of Stanisław Mackiewicz, a political publicist and Prime Minister of the postwar Polish government in exile from 1954 to 1955; and Seweryna Mackiewicz, mother of Polish writer .
In 1907 his family moved to Vilnius. In 1919, as a 17-year-old volunteer he participated in the Polish–Soviet War, first, as an uhlan of the Polish Army's 10th Lithuanian Uhlan Regiment, and then of the 13th Wilno Uhlan Regiment. He finished his military service during Poland's fight of independence as an uhlan of the . Similar to other young veterans of the war who entered university without their Matura graduation, Mackiewicz started his favourite subject of biological sciences at the University of Warsaw and then upon moving to Vilnius continued studies at the Vilnius University, but he never graduated with a degree. From 1923 he worked as a journalist for Słowo (The Word), a periodical published in Vilnius by his older brother Stanisław and fully sponsored and financed by the old noble families of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Journalist work took him all over the Baltic republics and eastern Poland.
Mackiewicz married Antonina Kopańska with whom he had a daughter Halina, and upon divorce he was in a long-term relationship with Wanda Żyłowska, with whom he had a daughter Idalia. Then he began his lifelong relationship with a writer and journalist of Vilnius' Słowo Barbara Toporska, but they had no children. They married in 1939.
World War II
On 17 September 1939 Soviet troops attacked eastern Poland as part of the joint German-Soviet Invasion of Poland. Upon the division of the country by occupying forces, the Vilnius region was transferred to then independent Lithuania. Mackiewicz remained in the city and between October 1939 and May 1940 was a publisher and editor-in-chief of the Gazeta Codzienna (Daily Paper), a Polish-language daily in Lithuanian-controlled Vilnius. In his articles, he attempted to initiate a political dialogue between Lithuanians and Poles. In May 1940, he was forbidden from further role as publisher and journalist by the Lithuanian government.
After the 15 June 1940 invasion and annexation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union, Mackiewicz worked temporarily as a labourer. In 1942, he witnessed the Ponary massacre of some 100,000 mostly Polish Jews by German SD, SS and the Lithuanian Nazi collaborators Ypatingasis būrys, which he described in his 1969 book Nie trzeba głośno mówić (One Is Not Supposed to Speak Aloud). At the end of 1942 (beginning of 1943) he was mistakenly sentenced to death by the resistance, for his work at Gazeta Codzienna and Goniec Codzienny. The sentence was cancelled out (see below).