Jerzy Urban (3 August 1933-3 October 2022) was a Polish journalist and communist politician who served as Press Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party from 1981 to 1989.
Biography[]
Jerzy Urbach was born in Lodz, Poland in 1933 to an assimilated Jewish family. He was raised in Lwow, and the Soviets incorrectly transcribed his family surname to "Urban", ultimately sparing them from the anti-Semitic violence which the Nazis unleashed on their occupation of Lwow in 1941. Urban was frequently expelled from school, including two faculties of the University of Warsaw, and he became a communist journalist during the 1950s. He cricitized Edward Gierek's rule, but he also opposed the Solidarity movement in 1980 and often criticized its leaders, such as Lech Walesa. Urban went on to serve as Press Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party from 1981 to 1989, and, in 1986, he revealed that the United States had betrayed the Solidarity movement, as Polish CIA spy Ryszard Kuklinski had uncovered Poland's plans to declare martial law in response to the Solidarity protests, and the United States opted not to warn Solidarity. Urban failed in his 1989 bid for parliament as an independent, suffering a landslide defeat and retiring from politics. He went on to establish an anti-clerical tabloid known for its profanity, including insults against Pope John Paul II which led to a 20,000-zloty fine, and he died in 2022 at the age of 89.