Wacław Czyżewski (real name Wacław Raś, pseudonyms Kora, Im; 25 April 1917 – 30 January 2002) was a Polish military commander and communist activist. He was officer of the People's Guard and People's Army, Divisional general of the Polish People's Army,[1] deputy commander of the Silesian Military District (1959–1963), deputy commandant of the Military University of Technology (1963–1968), head of the Polish mission in the International Commission of Control and Supervision in Korea (1968–1969), chief of the Internal Defense Forces (1970–1974), and deputy chief inspector of the Territorial Defense Forces (1974–1984).
Czyżewski was born on 25 April 1917 in Zielonka. In the 1930s, he worked in Warsaw as a bricklayer and was associated with the communist movement – he was active in the Union of Rural Youth of the Republic of Poland "Wici"[pl] and the Trade Union of Construction Workers, which remained under the influence of the KPP; the information he himself gave in his biographies about his membership in the Young Communist League of Poland and Communist Party of Poland is uncertain. On 12 August 1940, he was arrested by the Germans during a roundup, and escaped from a rail transport.
From 1941, he was an activist of the Workers' and Peasants' Combat Organization[pl], then one of the organizers and activists of the Polish Workers' Party in the Lublin Voivodeship. Officer of the People's Guard and the People's Army, postal commissioner, district secretary and head of the department in the AL Lublin District. Commander of the security of the Main Staff of the People's Army and commander of the personal security of Michał Rola-Żymierski.
He served in the Polish People's Army since 1944, commander of the SG security, from 1946 commander of an infantry regiment. In the early 1950s he was dismissed from the army and subjected to repressions, after October 1956 he returned to service. In 1957 he was promoted to brigadier general, and in 1970 to Divisional general.
Wacław Czyżewski (standing first from the right) in the partisan movement, 1944
