Roman Romkowski Roman Romkowski born Natan Grünspau [ Grinszpan ] - Kikiel , ( May 22 , 1907 – July 1 , 1965 ) was a communist official of Jewish background trained by Comintern in Moscow , who changed his name and settled into Warsaw after the Soviet takeover , and became second in command ( the deputy minister ) in Berman ' s Ministry of Public Security ( MBP ) during the late 1940s and early 1950s . Along with several other high functionaries including Dir . Anatol Fejgin , Col . Józef Różański , Dir . Julia Brystiger and the chief supervisor of Polish State Security Services , Minister Jakub Berman from the Politburo , Romkowski came to symbolize communist terror in postwar Poland . He was responsible for the work of departments : Counter - espionage ( 1st ) , Espionage ( 7th ) , Security in the ( 10th Dept . run by Fejgin ) , and others . Arrest . Romkowski was arrested on April 23 , 1956 , during the socialist Polish October revolution , and brought to trial along with functionaries responsible for gross violations of human rights law and their abuse of power . Historian Heather Laskey alleges that it was probably not a coincidence that the high ranking Stalinist security officers put on trial by Gomułka were Władysław Gomułka was captured by Światło and imprisoned by Romkowski in 1951 on Soviet orders , and interrogated by both , him and Fejgin . Gomułka escaped physical torture only as a close associate of Joseph Stalin , and was released three years later . The court proceedings . At trial , Col . Różański didn ' t deny that he routinely tortured prisoners including Polish United Workers ' Party members , and he didn ' t apologize for his actions . Instead , he pointed a finger at Romkowski and continuously repeated the Leninist argument of justification of any means to an end . For him , torturing people was a daily double - shift job , nothing more , nothing less . He admitted that all charges against his victims were falsified on site by his department . Roman Romkowski had been put on trial along with Józef Różański and a second Jewish defendant from his department , Anatol Fejgin . Romkowski insisted that Różański should have been removed already in 1949 for his destructive activities , even though , Romkowski himself taught Różański everything about torture . Both , Romkowski and Różański , were sentenced to 15 years in prison on 11 November 1957 , for unlawful imprisonment and mistreatment of innocent detainees . Feign was sentenced to 12 years , on similar charges . A well - known writer Kazimierz Moczarski from AK , interrogated by Romkowski ' s subordinates from January 9 , 1949 till June 6 , 1951 , described 49 different types of torture he endured . Beatings included truncheon blows to bridge of nose , salivary glands , chin , shoulder blades , bare feet and toes ( particularly painful ) , heels ( ten blows each foot , several times a day ) , cigarette burns on lips and eyelids and burning of fingers . Sleep deprivation , resulting in near - madness – meant standing upright in a narrow cell for seven to nine days with frequent blows to the face – a halucinatory method called by the interrogators " Zakopane " . General Romkowski told him on November 30 , 1948 , that he personally requested this " sheer hell " . The court announced that the actions of Roman Romkowski and his Ministry demoralised the Party as much as its own functionaries . Jakub Berman , the chief supervisor of State Security Services incriminated by Józef Światło who defected to the West , resigned from his Politburo post in May and was evaluated by the 20th Congress , which launched a process of partial democratisation of Polish political as well as economic life . The number of security agents at the ministry was cut by 22 % , and 9 , 000 socialist and populist politicians were released from prison on top of some 34 , 644 detainees across the country . " The routing of the Polish Stalinists was indeed complete . "