Purges among activists of the Communist Party of Poland (KPP) – the process of removing selected members of the Communist Party of Poland began as early as June 1937 in the Soviet Union.

At that time, KPP activists were summoned to Moscow and accused of co-operating with the Polish intelligence. In August 1937, Secretary-General Julian Leński-Leszczyński was summoned from France and arrested; he was shot in 1939. Twelve members of the Central Committee and several hundred regular party members were removed. Purges were also carried out among Polish communists fighting in the International Brigades in Spain. The February 1938 issue of the Comintern magazine Communist International featured an article suggesting that the KPP had been taken over by Józef Piłsudski’s agents. The Communist Party of Poland was officially disbanded by the Comintern in August 1938. At that time, most of the party’s leading activists had been sent to Soviet prisons and camps or killed.

The entry was written as part of the project Zapisywanie świata żydowskiego w Polsce [Recording the Jewish World in Poland], whose author is Anka Grupińska, a well-known Polish journalist and writer, specialising in the modern history of Polish Jews. The project, initiated in 2006 by the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, consists in recording interviews with Polish Jews from all generations.