Marceli Nowotko

Marceli Nowotko (Polish pronunciation: [marˈt͡sɛli nɔˈvɔtkɔ]; pseudonyms: Marian, Stary; 8 July 1893, Warsaw – 28 November 1942, Warsaw) was a Polish communist activist and first secretary of the Polish Workers Party (PPR).

Nowotko was a self-educated locksmith. He was a member of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania from 1916 and the Communist Party of Poland from 1918. He organised a Soviet communist agency in Ciechanów in 1918 and was a member of the soviet intelligence in Łapy during the Polish-Soviet War of 1920.

He was a middle-ranking KPP functionary between the wars, serving as a local party organiser and on the agriculture section of the central committee. From 1923 he was a member of the central committee of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine.

He fled from Rawicz prison to Soviet-occupied eastern Poland in September 1939 and once politically rehabilitated (he had for a time been regarded by the NKVD as a 'provocateur' in the KPP leadership), he served in the Soviet local administration in the Białystok area, as head of the soviet in Łapy.

Following the German invasion of the USSR in 1941 he was assigned to the 'Initiative Group' parachuted into Poland in December 1941 to establish the Polish Workers Party (PPR). He headed the leadership troika with Bolesław Mołojec and Paweł Finder. The efforts to re-group the Polish communist movement achieved little and by autumn 1942 the organization was under severe pressure from the Gestapo.

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