Karol Nawrocki is the PiS candidate for president of Poland. Who is he? Silhouette

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Karol Nawrockipresident of the Institute of National Remembrance, will be supported by Law and Justice as a candidate in next year's presidential elections.

Nawrocki is not a member of Law and Justice or any other party. The President of the Institute of National Remembrance is prohibited from doing so by law. PiS presents him as a “civic” candidate.

Karol Nawrocki was born in 1983 in Gdańsk. He is a historian and, since 2013, also a doctor of humanities. He also completed postgraduate studies at the Gdańsk University of Technology, majoring in International MBA in Strategy, Program and Project Management. His main area of ​​interest is the recent history of Poland, including the anti-communist opposition.

Since 2009, he has worked at the Gdańsk branch of the Institute of National Remembrance. From 2017, he was the director of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. Quick announced changes to its permanent exhibitionwhich caused a lot of controversy. The authors of the original exhibition treated the changes “as political interference in the ideological message of the exhibition and a violation of copyright.”

In July 2021 took over as president of the Institute of National Remembrance. IN IBRiS presidential poll for “Rzeczpospolita” the president of the Institute of National Remembrance took second place.

When he became the president of the Institute of National Remembrance, Nawrocki was a guest of Agata Adamek in the “Tak jest” program on TVN24, where he talked about how he perceived the functioning of the Institute. – Though Institute of National Remembrance it is primarily an institution that is responsible for scientific research and education, I am not afraid of the terms “memory politics” or “historical politics”. All countries in the world, not only superpowers, conduct a kind of memory politics in the 21st century. This is natural, he said.

Speaking about Zygmunt Szendzielarz “Łupaszka”, he said that the Institute of National Remembrance “does not deviate from difficult issues concerning the activities of anti-communist underground soldiers.” – For me, he is a national hero, distinguished in the fight against two totalitarianisms, but the historical world is not black and white – he said. To the comment that for some it is a painful figure, associated with the burning of villages and arouses great emotions in Podlasie, he replied that “our discussion proves how important the historical context is and how important history is.” – “Łupaszka” served his entire life in war conditions that brutalize the reality around us – he added.

When asked if Lech Wałęsa is he a hero or a traitor, he replied that he “has a nuanced assessment of Lech Wałęsa.” – He was the chairman of “Solidarity”, he was a secret collaborator of the Security Service. I know the expertise of the Sehn Institute. As a historian, I am convinced that Lech Wałęsa was involved in cooperation with the Security Service in the early 1970s, he said.

Nawrocki can boast of his sports achievements. As a boxer in the early 2000s, he won the Polish Junior Cup in the 91 kg category. He was also a player of the Ex Siedlce Gdańsk team.

At the beginning of September, “Rzeczpospolita” described Nawrocki's “dangerous relationships”.. The newspaper indicated that the president of the Institute of National Remembrance has close relations with Patryk Masiak, nicknamed Wielki Bu. He is a freak fight fighter, and in the past – as the daily wrote – a “criminal” “convicted of kidnapping” who “was sitting in a cell for dangerous prisoners, and the prosecutor's office links him to a Tricity gang of pimps,” it said.

In an interview with the newspaper, Nawrocki emphasized that he met Masiak several years ago at a boxing gym, because he trained boxing in his youth. – We haven't seen each other for many years, so I won't comment on criminal matters. I have no idea about them, he argued.

The newspaper also claims that “if the boxer who celebrates the Świętokrzyska Brigade is in the second round (of the presidential elections), he will have the votes of the Confederation in his pocket from the very beginning.” Nawrocki recently wrote on social media that the soldiers of the Świętokrzyska Brigade “chose their path of fighting against the German and Soviet occupiers. However, they were still moving towards a free, independent and sovereign Poland.”

As described by “Gazeta Wyborcza”, Nawrocki comes from the working-class Siedlce district in Gdańsk, where he grew up with his sister in an old tenement house. His father was a turner by profession and was a member of “Solidarity” in the 1980s, while his mother was a bookbinder and mostly took care of the house.

He has a wife, Marta, with whom he has two children and the oldest son from her first relationship.

In February this year, the Russian independent website Mediazona published data leaked from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. This is a list of people wanted in Russia. Among them is Karol Nawrocki and three other Poles. The search is probably related to the demolition of Soviet monuments and the removal of Soviet symbols from public spaces.

Read more: Four Poles wanted by the Russian Interior Ministry

As Rafał Leśkiewicz, director of the IPN Spokesman's Office, emphasized then, Nawrocki “consistently and decisively deals with disinformation and historical distortions regarding the recent history of Poland, which the authorities of the Russian Federation present in the public space,” and “additionally, after Russia's aggression against Ukraine, he with an appeal to local authorities in Poland to remove the last Soviet propaganda objects, the so-called monuments of gratitude to the Red Army, from space Polish cities and towns.