First President of Poland assassinated
Warsaw, 18 December 1922 – The first president of the Polish Republic, Gabriel Narutowicz, has been assassinated less than a week after being elected to Poland’s highest office.
Narutowicz, who was Jewish, was shot while visiting an art exhibition on 16 December. The assassin, who has been named only as Niewiadomski, a 33 year-old painter, walked up behind the president and shot him in the back three times with a revolver. President Narutowicz was dead within minutes.
The assassin claims to have acted alone and without accomplices and has stated that his motive was nothing more than dissatisfaction at the result of the recent election. On the day the president was sworn in there were cries of ‘kill the Jew’, in the wake of which the Chief of Police was dismissed and the Minister for Internal Affairs resigned.
Established as a sovereign independent state in 1919, Poland adopted a republican constitution in 1921 which guaranteed that the full benefits of citizenship would be enjoyed by all citizens – most notably, the right of every adult citizen to exercise their franchise.
Despite such evident progress, the Irish Independent this morning has editorialised on the destructive influence of the ‘Polish disciples of Fascismo’ who have taken their cue from the tactics used by Mussolini and his followers in Italy. The late president was, the Independent notes, ‘denounced as the chosen tool of the Jews and the Socialists; the parliamentary colleagues of the Fascisti, even refused to attend… when the oath was being administered to him; and the students outside erected barricades on the streets to prevent his escort from passing to the chamber… The signs are but too clear that between the distractions of her score of political parties and the new troubles created by the rise of Fascismo, Poland has yet many years of internal strife and discord.’
It is reported that the assassin is to be court-martialled and shot.
The Roman Catholic bishops of Kraków and Vilnius have ordered that Requiem masses be held for the late president in all the Catholic churches in their dioceses.
[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]
