34 Facts About Edward Gierek

Edward Gierek came from a coal mining family and grew up in France from a young age, becoming active in the French communist movement and the Polish community in France.

Edward Gierek was deported to the Second Polish Republic for his communist advocacy in 1934 but moved to Belgium and was active in the Belgian Resistance during World War II.

Edward Gierek opened the first fully-operational highway in Poland from Warsaw to Katowice in 1976.

Edward Gierek's policies were funded by large foreign loans and Poland continued to submerge into economic decline by the end of the 1970s.

Edward Gierek's government was unable to pay its creditors and the country was so heavily indebted that rationing was introduced due to shortages.

Edward Gierek was expelled from the PZPR and arrested briefly in 1981 during martial law in Poland, living the remainder of his life in retirement until his death in 2001.

Edward Gierek is fondly remembered for his patriotism and modernization policies despite dragging Poland into financial and economic decline; over 1.8 million flats were constructed to house the growing population, and he was responsible for initiating the production of the Fiat 126 car in Poland, and the construction of Warszawa Centralna railway station, the most modern European station at the time of its completion.

Edward Gierek was born in Porabka, now part of Sosnowiec, into a coal-mining family.

Edward Gierek's father was killed in an accident at a pit when he was four.

Edward Gierek's mother remarried and emigrated to northern France, where he lived from the age of 10 and worked in a coal mine from the age of 13.

Edward Gierek joined the French Communist Party in 1931, and in 1934 was deported to Poland for organizing a strike.

The Giereks went to Belgium, where Edward worked in the coal mines of Waterschei, where he contracted pneumoconiosis.

Edward Gierek was a co-founder of the Belgian branch of the Polish Workers' Party and a chairman of the National Council of Poles in Belgium.

Edward Gierek was able to resolve the situation using persuasion; the use of force was avoided.

Edward Gierek was a member of the Sejm, Polish parliament, from 1952.

In March 1956, when Edward Ochab became the party's first secretary, Gierek became a secretary of the Central Committee, even though he publicly expressed doubts about his own qualifications.

Edward Gierek returned to the Politburo in March 1959, at the III Congress of the PZPR.

In March 1957, in addition to his Central Committee duties, Edward Gierek became the first secretary of the Katowice Voivodeship PZPR organization, a job he kept until 1970.

Edward Gierek created a personal power base in the Katowice region and became the nationally recognized leader of the young technocrat faction of the party.

Edward Gierek believes profoundly in the leading role that history conferred upon Communist parties and lives by the maxim that a government should be strong and rule unshakably.

Edward Gierek may have tried to make his move during the 1968 Polish political crisis.

Edward Gierek used strong language to condemn the purported "enemies of People's Poland" who were "disturbing the peaceful Silesian water".

Edward Gierek's "reform" was based primarily on large-scale foreign borrowing, not accompanied by major systemic restructuring.

Edward Gierek is widely credited with opening Poland to political and economic influence from the West.

Edward Gierek was trusted by Leonid Brezhnev, which meant that he was able to pursue his policies without much Soviet interference.

The standard of living increased markedly in Poland in the first half of the 1970s, and for a time Edward Gierek was hailed as a miracle worker.

The period of Edward Gierek's rule is notable for the rise of organized opposition in Poland.

The increase, supported by Edward Gierek, was announced by Jaroszewicz in the Sejm on 24 June 1976.

Edward Gierek, who had previously met Pope Paul VI at the Vatican, talked with the Pope during his visit.

In May 1980, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent Western boycott of the Soviet Union, Edward Gierek arranged a meeting between Valery Giscard d'Estaing and Leonid Brezhnev in Warsaw.

Edward Gierek responded to Brezhnev's gloomy assessment of the situation in Poland with his own upbeat predictions, possibly not fully cognizant of the country's, and his own, predicament.

Edward Gierek died in July 2001 of pneumoconiosis in a hospital in Cieszyn, near the southern mountain resort of Ustron where he spent his last years.

Edward Gierek's government is fondly remembered by some for the improved living standards the Poles enjoyed in the 1970s under his rule.

Edward Gierek was the only PZPR leader for whom the Polish public showed signs of nostalgia, discernible especially after his death.