Józef Oleksy was a Polish politician and economist born on 22 June 1946 in Nowy Sącz and who died on 9 January 2015 in Warsaw after a long battle with cancer.
He came from a working-class family; his father, also named Józef, was a carpenter, and his mother, Michalina, raised five children while working the land and embroidering traditional highland costumes.
In his youth Oleksy served as an altar boy at St Margaret’s church in Nowy Sącz and briefly attended a lower seminary in Tarnów before completing secondary school there.
He studied foreign trade at the Warsaw School of Planning and Statistics (now the SGH Warsaw School of Economics), earned a doctorate in economics, and later worked as a university lecturer and dean.
Oleksy rose through the ranks of the communist party and later became one of the leading figures of the post-communist left, serving as Marshal of the Sejm and Prime Minister of Poland.
Siblings
Józef grew up in a family of five children.
The eldest was his sister Bogumiła, born in 1940 during the German occupation; she later worked in education as a school director and education inspector.
A brother named Zbigniew was born next but died at the age of two.
Marian, born in 1944, trained as a railway technician and worked in Poland and later abroad before his death in 2016.
Józef himself was born in 1946, and the youngest sibling was Wacław, born nine years later.
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Career
Oleksy joined the Polish United Workers’ Party in the late 1960s and advanced through its structures, eventually serving as First Secretary of the provincial committee in Biała Podlaska and as a minister in Mieczysław Rakowski’s government in 1989.
After the fall of communism he co-founded Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland and later the Democratic Left Alliance.
He was elected to the Sejm in 1989 and remained a deputy until 2005. He served as Marshal of the Sejm from 1993 to 1995 and again from 2004 to 2005.
In March 1995 he became Prime Minister, succeeding Waldemar Pawlak, but resigned in February 1996 after Interior Minister Andrzej Milczanowski publicly accused him of having cooperated with Russian intelligence under the codename “Olin.”
Although the allegations were never fully proven in court, they forced his resignation.
He later returned to high office as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior and Administration in Leszek Miller’s government in 2004, and briefly chaired the Democratic Left Alliance.
He also taught economics and international relations at several universities.
Accolades
Oleksy received several Polish state decorations.
These included the Silver Cross of Merit (1972), the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1984), the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, and, posthumously in 2015, the Grand Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.
He was also awarded the Medal of the Commission of National Education and other commemorative medals linked to his long public service.
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