Poland’s Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski dies at 90

[DonViejo]

Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the survivor of a Siberian labor camp, was an unlikely servant to the Soviet Union and its communist ideology.

Poland’s last communist leader, the general in tinted glasses who was best known for his 1981 martial law crackdown on Solidarity, died Sunday at age 90 after a long struggle with cancer and a recent stroke.

Born into a patriotic and Catholic Polish milieu, Jaruzelski and his family were deported to Siberia by the Red Army during World War II. That harsh land took his father’s life and inflicted snow blindness on Jaruzelski, forcing him to wear dark glasses.

Despite his suffering at Soviet hands, Jaruzelski faithfully imposed Moscow’s will on his subjugated nation until communism crumbled across the region in 1989.

more
http://www.salon.com/2014/05/25/polands_gen_wojciech_jaruzelski_dies_at_90/

Read more: http://www.salon.com/2014/05/25/polands_gen_wojciech_jaruzelski_dies_at_90/

[Spitfire of ATJ]

1. I remember this guy as being an iron fisted bastard in the 70s....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_1970_protests

[Nye Bevan]

2. There's not a wet eye in the house (nt)