Dr hab. Lech S. Borkowski
[…]
Zielona Góra
Andrzej Seremet
Prosecutor General
ul. Rakowiecka 26/30
02-528 Warsaw
Zielona Góra, 19 February 2016
Sir,
I am informing you about violations of human rights and fundamental rights of our family: me, my wife, and our daughter.
Our family – me, my wife, and our daughter – was attacked during the school year 2011/2012. Actions against me have been conducted at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań from the beginning of my employment in 1995. First repressions against my wife appeared immediately after we had married [in 1997]. In September 2011, series of brutal, ruthless, unfounded provocations and victimizations were organized against her in the State School of Music in Zielona Góra.
In February and March 2012, there were simultaneous provocations aimed at our family.
(1) I was attacked at the Department of Physics of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań,
(2) My wife Małgorzata Głuchowska was attacked at her workplace in the State School of Music in Zielona Góra,
(3) My daughter was attacked on the 8 and 9 February 2012 in the elementary school at Truskawkowa Street in Zielona Góra.
Typical Communist methods of provocation were used in each of these three cases. Attacks have been carefully planned, prepared, and coordinated.
I come from a family persecuted by the Communists. My mother, Irena Borkowska (maiden name Ostrowska), was sentenced by the Soviet security organs in 1949 for helping Polish resistance members in the Brasław county. She has been imprisoned until 1956. Our family remained the target of Communist repression throughout the Communist dictatorship.
My father, Bolesław Borkowski, was born in Krejwańce, Oszmiana county, on 1 January 1920. After the arrival of the Red Army in 1944, he was sent to the Polish Communist army remaining the Soviet control. Together with several dozen others, he deserted from it on 13 January 1945 in reaction to mass murder of Polish resistance members carried out by the Communists.
[…]
After crossing the Bug river from west to east the unit has been surrounded by Soviet forces. In the ensuing battle, my father was wounded during an attempt to break through the enemy line. The Poles were imprisoned in Brześć. They were held in hellish conditions. The soviet interrogators tortured the Poles.
My father was condemned to 10 years of concentration camp. He served nearly entire sentence. He returned from the camps in 1956. I am attaching the copy of a document from the Foreign Ministry of Belarus issued in 1956.
My mother Irena Ostrowska, born on 1 April 1927 in Gienuża in the Brasław county, was arrested by the Soviet security service in 1949 together with her father Klemens Ostrowski and her brother, also Klemens, who was named after his father. Their family was providing food and shelter to members of Polish anti-communist resistance. This is a place near Buczany village, not far from Widze. This area was inhabited by Poles and belonged to Poland before 1939. Like her parents and several siblings, my mother was imprisoned in a Communist concentration camp. She remained there from 1949 to 1956. When her younger brother Klemens was found after his release from the camp he was damaged both physically and psychologically. He has been most likely tortured.
Various hostile activities aimed at our family are nothing for me. I have experienced them since early childhood. They serve the purpose of murdering the social identity of each of us and belong to the arsenal of typical Communist methods.
Destruction of an individual’s social function is a continuation of the genocide which was begun by the Soviet NKVD in the Katyń forest in western Russia in 1940 and in many other places of Soviet crimes. This means that in spite of official declarations about stopping repressions, the persecution of Poles is carried on.
My parents came to Kętrzyn in 1956. Here they remained under surveillance and harassment. Communists staged provocations against my father at his workplace. My mother was openly followed by designated functionaries.
In the 1970s, Witold Giriat, my mother’s cousin working in the Institute of Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, was forced to emigrate. Giriat was a pioneer of the semiconductor physics in Poland and an author of original methods of producing high quality semiconductor crystals, without which no sensible research was possible. Contrary to official statements this was repression for political reasons. The provocation was based on simulating a personal conflict. Giriat went to Venezuela, where he organised a new semiconductor laboratory and continued studies of magnetic semiconductors in the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Cientificas in Caracas. Many scientists from around the world thanked him for providing high quality samples of semiconductor crystals, which they used in their research.
In 1984, the Soviet authorities refused my application to visit my family members living in Oszmiana (Oshmiana) and Brasław (Braslav) counties. My parents also applied for permission to visit the family and their application was approved.
In 1985, the authorities of Wroclaw University of Technology (Politechnika Wrocław) blocked the month-long practical training in Madrid in Spain, part of the IAESTE exchange program, which I have won in the university-wide competition. The deputy rector for student affairs, to whom I appealed, did not provide any justification for the decision. He said that another student, which had not participated in the competition, had higher overall score as a result of a better result in a test of English. However, that student, did not take part in the contest and did not take the English test. The deputy rector lied.
After completing the studies in Poland, I went to the United States in 1987 to pursue a doctoral degree. When crossing the Polish-East German border on the Warsaw-Paris train, I was the only person led out of the train with all my luggage for a detailed search. The train left without me. I was undressed naked and a detailed search was carried out, including an inspection of the rectum. The functionaries confiscated my 900 US dollars for the air ticket from Paris to the US, where I was to begin doctoral studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg. I was later allowed to continue my trip to Paris, but without the money.
I was awarded a PhD at the University of Florida in Gainesville in 1995. I decided to return to Poland after receiving a job promise at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.
Several months before completing my PhD, I learned about a Polish-US conference on superconductivity in Duszniki-Zdrój in early September 1995. The main institutional organizer on the Polish side was the Institute of Low Temperature and Structure Research in Wrocław. The conference was probably organized entirely by the Polish side. American scientists came on the invitation from Poland to present their research in the form of a lecture. There were also poster sessions. Following organizers’ guidelines, I submitted the title of my poster and included an abstract.
I was known to conference organizers as a scientist. I maintained contacts with scientists in Poland during my entire stay in the US. Many times, I sent them copies of publications unavailable in Poland, frequently at my own expense. I helped substantially a friend from my undergraduate years in obtaining a Fulbright scholarship for a one-year stay at the University of Florida in Gainesville, by contacting him with my PhD advisor. There was not the slightest reason to refuse my access to this conference.
First, there was a long silence. Then, after my inquiry, I was informed that I was refused participation at the conference. The reason for this refusal was not provided.
I received this information as an email message from Piotr Klamut, son of Jan Klamut, a long-time director of the Polish Academy of Science Institute and a former secretary of the Regional Committee of the Polish United Workers Party in Wrocław. He informed that my submission was not accepted, but did not provide a reason behind this decision.
The refusal to accept my poster and my participation in the Polish-US conference on superconductivity in 1995 was unjustified and incomprehensible. When I asked Roman Micnas during my first visit to Poznań in August 1995, if he could intervene and help me attend the conference, he said he did have any influence on decisions of this type.
I decided nevertheless to travel to Duszniki and to attempt to enter the conference venue. None of the Poles at the meeting helped me, although several of them knew Peter Hirschfeld, who was my thesis advisor in Gainesville, and Karol Wysokiński from Marie Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin was his good acquaintance from a postdoctoral stay in Munich in the 1980s. I was helped by Michael Norman from the Argonne National Laboratory in the US, who knew me and the papers I wrote with Peter Hirschfeld.
This situation proves that there was nothing accidental about refusing my conference submission in 1995. This was a decision reached and implemented collectively by people responsible for controlling and leading the scientific life in Poland. Since there was no justification of refusing my attendance and there were no rational reasons for it, it is logically clear that the aim of the refusal was known to persons leading the scientific community and was scrupulously implemented by them. This was an illegal activity.
When I was offered a job in Poznań and began working there, the authorities at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań have not informed me about necessity of validating my PhD diploma from the US. I did not know the law applying to universities in Poland. I assumed that the University will inform me about everything I needed to do in relation to my employment. However, the information about validation (nostryfikacja in Polish) of my academic qualifications was withheld from me. I was employed as an adiunkt. (*)
I spent the academic year of 1997/98 at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. I went there on recommendation from my PhD advisor Peter Hirschfeld.
A break-in occurred to the computer system of the School of Physics occurred during my work at Georgia Tech. It originated from the computer system of Department of Physics of the adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. Carlos Sa de Melo from Georgia Tech, who decided about employing me on a one-year contract, did not behave normally towards me. At the end of my stay in Atlanta, we have finished work on an important article. However, de Melo delayed sending it for publication. We have corresponded about the article for several months after my return to Poland. However, the article has not been sent for publication. Eventually, the article has been published in 2000, but without my name as a co-author, which is both violation of the law and violation of scientific ethics. The article was presented as co-authored by de Melo and his PhD student R. D. Duncan. Here is the article reference:
After my return to Poland, when I was employed again at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, no one mentioned the issue of validating my American diploma and no one informed about the necessity of it. Thus, the University violated the law twice: in 1995 and in 1998. The lack of certificate confirming the validity of my American PhD implied the absence of my personal details and associated documents in state archives. Further course of events showed that this is the only possible interpretation. The aim was simply to eliminate my presence from the state archives. As if I have never existed.
The authorities of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań have later tried to hide the fact of my work at the Georgia Institute of Technology by awarding in 2015 the customary reward on the occasion of the 20 employment anniversary, although my absence during the 1997/98 academic year meant that year could have counted as an employment year. When leaving for Atlanta around September 8, 1997, I did not have the promise of continued employment at AMU. My employment expired on 30 September 1997 and I was not given a new contract to sign. Looking at the contents of my personal file in the Department of Personnel and Administration of AMU in 2016, I found two documents related to my trip to the US. One of them is signed by the deputy rector Stanisław Lorenc, another by deputy rector Marek Kręglewski. Both are false, because they contain a suggestion that I have been sent abroad by AMU, which is false.
In 2001, I tried to obtain a small flat at the Academic Hotel in Koziegłowy on the outskirts of Poznań. The AMU Department of Social Affairs should have sent a written response to my application. I have not received an answer.
In Summer 2005 we moved to an apartment at […] in Zielona Góra. In the Fall of 2005, we were visited by Mr. and Mrs. Awdiejew (Avdeev) from Zielona Góra. Aleksander Awdiejew is a Russian dentist formerly serving in the Red Army in a unit stationed on the Polish territory. When the Red Army withdrew from Poland, Awdiejew remained here with his family. His younger daughter was my wife Małgorzata Głuchowska’s student in the State School of Music in Zielona Góra. During their visit in our apartment Awdiejew asked us to allow their older daughter to photograph our place. He said that his daughter was getting married and that seeing our apartment would be help her to arrange her place. We agreed to it. Awdiejew’s daughter came one Sunday during the winter of 2005/2006, when I went to Poznań to hold classes for weekend students. She photographed meticulously the entire apartment in the presence of my wife.
Not long afterwards, I joked during a conversation with Andrzej Koper at the Department of Physics of the Adam Mickiewicz University, that being a dentist is an excellent cover for a spying activity. Many people go to a dentist and the exchange of intelligence can be carried out without arising suspicion. When the younger of Awdiejew daughters ended her education by graduating from the first six-year stage of the State School of Music, neither she nor her parents came to thank my wife for six years of hard work and successes, although all of them were present at the graduating ceremony at the end of the school year. Neither did they contact my wife in any other way. This was a sudden and huge change from earlier warm relation between my wife and Mr. and Mrs. Awiejew. There were no obvious reasons for this unkind behavior. Earlier, Mr. Awdiejew has always been full of respect and played a role of a cultured and well mannered person.
In our new apartment, we were paying very high heating bill. The heating energy was provided by the city-wide system. Our bills for heating a square meter of our apartment was 2 to 3 times higher than that of other apartments in our block. On 17 April 2008, I delivered a letter to the administrator of our block of flats asking for inspection of our heating meters. This is a standard procedure, Jest to standardowa procedura, which is based on verification of the quantities displayed by the meters’ LCDs by a technician using specialized equipment and software. The administrator and our housing association board have not reacted to our letter for about three months. Only after my phone call to the administrator in July 2008 a technician from Poznań representing the Techem company, who manufactured the heat meters, carried out the inspection. Data contained by the reader on the largest of the heaters in our apartment were completely wrong. The device parameters were outside allowed limits. The housing association board and Techem were obliged to react to the problem. Neither the board nor Techem respond in any way.
In mid-February 2008 I informed someone that I found a virus in my home computer. Couple of days later, Andrzej Koper from the Quantum Physics Section of the Department of Physics made a telephone call to my home number in Zielona Góra, although he knew that I was at the University in Poznań on that day. This was on Monday. He spoke to my wife. Koper pretended not to know where I was. He told her he had a virus in his computer and wanted to ask me for advice about removing it. Koper knew, however, that I never had the relevant knowledge and that I was never interested in computer viruses.
In March 2008, I realized that Andrzej Koper from the Quantum Physics Section of the Physics Department, with whom I shared the same office room for several years, was engaged in activities directed against me. The character of these actions, as well as the contents of his conversations and his privileged position in the department may be related to intelligence service, possibly military. This could be a service of a foreign country.
In my view, Koper’s habilitation monograph did not qualify for awarding him the habilitation. He has not presented any research results that would justify decision to award him the habilitation title.
In March 2008, I criticized sharply one of Koper’s political opinions during one of the weekly Quantum Physics Section’s meetings, conducted usually on Tuesdays. From that point on, I stopped having any contact with him at all.
I informed Piotr Tomczak, another member of the Quantum Physics Section, about Koper’s behavior. This was in March or April 2008. Later, I informed also Zbigniew Jacyna Onyszkiewicz, the Section’s head at the time.
On April 1, 2008, the authorities carried out a sudden, unannounced change of the director in the State School of Music in Zielona Góra, where my wife Małgorzata Głuchowska worked as a teacher of piano. One of the School’s teachers, Małgorzata Małaczyńska, became the new director. She nominated my wife to be the new head of the piano section. Małaczyńska (currently carrying the last name of Szumska) engaged later in open hostile and criminal acts against my wife, starting in September 2011.
On 15 June 2008, the head of the Department of Physics of Adam Mickiewicz University, Ryszard Naskręcki, emailed a message to all departmental employees a message containing the following information:
11. On May 12, the Russian political scientist and President Putin’s advisor Sergei Karaganov, visited our Department. Karagnov was interested mostly in cooperation in the ‘new areas’ of science such as bio-science and nano-science.
Karaganov was invited to Poznań by both Adam Mickiewicz University Rector Stanisław Lorenc and the Consul General of the Russian Federation in Poznań. He conducted a lecture at the University and spoke provocatively to the media about the Communist genocide in Katyń in 1940.
“From what I know, the documents have been released long time ago. The Poles have a complex. They should cure themselves from it.”
In mid-July 2008, around July 16, I went to the Agency of Internal Security (Agencja Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego) in Zielona Góra in order to provide information about illegal activities against me, which could not be explained in a usual way. I reckoned, that informing the Agency was the right course of action. In my conversation with Agency’s representative I pointed out at the possibility of engagement of intelligence service of a foreign country and provided the relevant arguments. I used this opportunity also to provide information about the death threats against the Poland’s president Lech Kaczyński, which were published on 2 June 2008 in a discussion forum on the Internet portal pis.org.pl. I spoke also about an extraordinary ease with which Russian citizens obtain jobs at state schools of music and at universities, while at the same time Poles often encounter huge difficulties.
The privileged treatment of Russians is particularly noticeable in western Poland, where a number of persons from Russia held and continue to hold managerial functions in the schools of music. This type of privileged treatment does not arise from either professional or managerial qualifications. I pointed out the example of Maria Kuna, a pianist teacher who came to Poland from Russia early 1990s, who received exceedingly privileged treatment was appointed the head of the piano section in the State School of Music in Zielona Góra without any justification for this decision. Kuna camer to the Zielona Góra State School of Music in September 1997, when my wife joined me for a year during my stay in Atlanta in the US. At the school party for last year students marking one hundred days before graduation, which was probably in 2009, Kuna made a series of photographs of all persons present at the party. The pictures were taken methodically in such a way, that they formed a precise photographic documentation of the party. She did not ask anyone for permission to take pictures. Kuna has not share these pictures later with the photographed persons.
From 6 to 13 August 2008, I was in Amsterdam at the conference Low Temperature Physics 25. In the evening of 11 August, I walked near the city center. I behaved as a typical tourist. I noticed at some point, that a man standing nearby is watching me and taking pictures of me. I went away from that place along an empty street. I looked at shop window displays. However, I noticed that the same man is following me. I entered a small grocery store to wait and to let him pass. The man went to the shop after me. This did not look normal. This was a shop with non-European food articles. I left the shop and continued walking faster to the end of the street. The man followed. At the end of the street there was a canal and a bridge. One could continue straight onto the bridge, or left or right along the canal. I turned left. The man did the same. I turned 180 degrees and went into the opposite direction along the canal. I accelerated, stopped behind a car and took the man’s picture, when he was passing me. I turned again and went back into the street I came from. The same did the man. I returned to the place where I noticed him for the first time. He did the same. After reaching the street corner, I turned and jogged along another canal. Afterwards, I walked fast to lose to the stranger. I turned couple of times at street corners. Next, I went into a pub and ordered a beer with the intention to wait. Later, I went to a police station in Amsterdam city center and reported the incident. I also handed in the pictures of the stranger taken on my digital camera.
At at the end of November or beginning of December 2008, someone was present in our apartment on a Sunday evening when we went to church. The line to lift the exterior blind on our terrace window was cut. We lowered the blind before leaving. We found the line was cut, when trying to lift the blind the next morning.
For most of my employment at the Department of Physics of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, I was forced to use computer equipment bought out of my own pocket. University authorities refused to buy even a personal computer for me. When I informed Bogusław Mróz, who held a managerial role in the University’s Institute of Physics at the time, that I am using a private notebook computer bought in the US in 1998 to carry out my professional duties, He responded cynically “that’s commendable” and did not react further. This exchange occurred during a weekly meeting of the group I was member of, probably in 1999. Other group members witnessed the conversation and no one said anything and there was no reaction at all.
The persons holding leadership and managerial roles in the Department of Physics of the Adam Mickiewicz University violated the official rules for carrying my habilitation procedure in 2010. I informed the University authorities about it, in particular the deputy rector Andrzej Lesicki. However, he pretended not to have any influence on the processes occurring at the University departments. Departmental authorities failed to carry out the duties to which they were obliged by law. I was not provided with full and sufficient information. Some information was withheld from me. Ryszard Naskręcki, who was the head of the Department of Physics, organized a provocation against in October 2010, whose aim was to stir me up emotionally and to provide an excuse for more open actions of departmental officials against me.
My habilitation procedure was delayed. It took twelve months instead of six as specified by law. One of the habilitation reviewers was Ryszard Tadeusiewicz, former Rector of Academy of Mining and Metallurgy in Kraków. He was the first of the four referees to submit his review but refused to provide a conclusive decision. He made a provocation against me, writing in the conclusion of his review:
Due to no failure on my part, but for the reason of inappropriate documentation I REFUSE to express an opinion about the Candidates scientific achievements.
and a little further,
However, it is due to the Candidate’s failure that I am not able to carry out the assessment of his achievements (scientific, didactic, and administrative). Therefore I do not conclude this review with a definite statement.
The emphasis in the quoted fragment is exactly the same as in the original. The documents for my habilitation have been prepared according to instructions expressed in appropriate regulations. The documentation has been accepted by the Department’s authorities and by the Central Commission for Academic Degrees and Titles. The Central Commission moved my habilitation forward and there could be no issue of incomplete documentation and anything inappropriate on my part.
Tadeusiewicz’s review is dated 15 July 2010. The office of the Department of Physics has not informed me about the arrival of this review. I learned about it on 8 September 2010, when I asked about the status of my habilitation. The deputy head of the Department Adam Lipowski was obliged to oversee the habilitation’s progress. However, he failed to carry out his duty.
The provocation by Tadeusiewicz must have been arranged in cooperation with the Department of Physics of Adam Mickiewicz University. As a publicly person known, who wrote articles in the press and appearing in tv, Tadeusiewicz knew perfectly well the consequences of his words. His behavior indicates he was absolutely not afraid of shame in the scientific community as a result of his violation of law and ethical standards. The Central Commission for Academic Degrees and Titles continued to appoint him as the reviewer in habilitation and professorial procedures. His provocation against me has not harmed him in any way, because he was a frequent reviewer of academic advance in subsequent years as well. The unavoidable conclusion is that the way Tadeusiewicz acted in my habilitation procedure was fully approved by the scientific community and by the Central Commission.
During the entire period of my employment at the Adam Mickiewicz University, I was excluded from offering topics of Master’s theses which were provided by each of the Department of Physics’ sections. The Section head Zbigniew Jacyna-Onyszkiewicz, tried to use an excuse that he authorized Piotr Tomczak for the role of presenting theses topics. However, Tomczak completely ignored me and has not informed me about it.
I have been completely excluded from the departmental organizational and administrative activities. I have not been allowed to participate in various committees at the AMU’s Department of Physics. I have not been invited to participate in the organization of scientific conferences organized or co-organized by the Department of Physics of the Adam Mickiewicz University.
My scientific achievements were degraded. In my submission for the University’s Rector Award for 2010, which I submitted to the Department’s office on June 10, 2011, I wrote
“I submit to the Rector’s Award the following achievement:
- The discovery of the multimodal transition in the Hodgkin-Huxley neuron model
- Proving, that this effect appears in the experimental measurements of the Japanese group Takahashi et al.
- Discovery of coherent stochastic antiresonance“
At 9:51 on June 14, the deputy head of the Department of Physics Antoni Wójcik emailed to the Department members the schedule of presentations of candidates to the Rector’s Award. The second point of my submission,
- Proving, that this effect appears in the experimental measurements of the Japanese group Takahashi et al.
was removed from the distributed document.
At 10:42 of the same day, I sent to Antoni Wójcik an email, in which I pointed out that the second point from my submission was missing. I asked for correction of the error. I have not received a reply. During the Department of Physics Faculty meeting on 22 June 2011, the head Ryszard Naskręcki presented the falsified version of my submission, in disagreement with my proposal of June 10 and in disagreement with my email of June 14.
On November 10, 2011, I submitted a letter to the Adam Mickiewicz University Rector Bronisław Marciniak, in which I presented the issue. I wrote,
“I would like to ask the Rector to take a stand on this issue and to respond to the following questions:
1. Do you believe the removal of person’s achievements from University documents is the right course of action?
2. Could the decisions of the Department of Physics leadership have influence on the rank of the award and the associated with it financial reward?
3. Could the degrading of person’s achievements and concealing those achievements have influence on decisions of the person’s professional advance?”
I have not received a response from the Rector.
My name was omitted from the departmental list of valuable publications, which were also rewarded financially.
On several occasions, my lectures were cancelled without me being informed, when the lecture hall was reserved for meetings with high school students from the area around Poznań visiting the University.
The University Rector and the Rector’s office refused to provide access to the agreement between the University and the IBM company concerning opportunities for students’ practical training. According to the Rector’s report for the 2006 submitted to the University Senate on 26 March 2007, this agreement has been signed in 2006. The agreement was an outcome of my initiative resulting from contacts with IBM Polska. However, I was not informed by the University about the agreement. I received the information from IBM’s employees.
In September 2011, an entire series of provocations against my wife Małgorzata Głuchowska was launched in the State School of Music in Zielona Góra. My wife was at the time the head of the piano section and the head of the parents’ council. Among members of the parents’ council was certain Sławomir Mundry, an employee of the Zielona Góra branch of PGNiG, the Polish oil and gas exploration company. His daughter has just began her attending the School. Mundry played the role of the organizer of many actions against my wife, which were completely unfounded. My wife is an exemplary employee and citizen. She was a good leader and was a good example to follow by other teachers in the School. Analyzing the circumstances, the cruelty and ruthlessness of participants of the campaign against Małgorzata Głuchowska, we are led to the inevitable conclusion, that these actions were meticulously planned and coordinated. Mundry was one of the main perpetrators. He tried also to stage a provocation against me during the parents’ council meeting of 29 November 2011, in which I participated on my wife’s request as an observer with an advisory role. These actions were wide-ranging and the persons involved were completely unafraid of the consequences of illegal activities. To the contrary, they were assured of their impunity and approval on the part of the state functionaries in supervisory roles, Ministry of Culture, the prosecuting office, and other state institutions of state power. It turned out that also the Prime Minister of Poland Donald Tusk and President Bronisław Komorowski approved the bold violations of law and victimization of my wife.
My habilitation monograph Nonlinear Dynamics of Hodgkin-Huxley Neurons was published by the publishing house Wydawnictwo Naukowe of the Adam Mickiewicz University in January 2010. In January 2012, I informed the University Rector Bronisław Marciniak, that the presentation of the monograph on the publisher’s website contains many errors. Information about other books on the website was free of such errors.
In February 2012, I notified Piotr Tomczak, the departmental deputy head for student affairs, that two female students from Spain committed plagiarism in their work submitted as part of requirements for the “Dynamics of Neural Systems” course which I taught in English in the Winter semester of 2011/12. The students participated in the EU Erasmus exchange program. I sent him detailed analysis. I expected a response which would express the University’s policy in such cases. Tomczak has not informed me about appointing a commission led by the head of Quantum Physics Section Zbigniew Jacyna-Onyszkiewicz, i.e. my immediate administrative superior. This fact is already a pathology. Tomczak was member of the same Section. Theoretically speaking, this may not have been against the law, but it is abundantly clear that in a matter of this kind one should avoid the overlap of the matter with administrative ties of those involved. Appointing a commission was not necessary. The deputy head of the Department had enough competence to formulate a stance and make a decision.
In its brief statement commission attacked me and my teaching methods, although my requirements of student’s written essay followed similar methods used in top western universities. The commission’s statement is dated 14 March 2012. However, it was delivered several days later. On 16 March 2012, I was attacked by Roman Zawodny during the Faculty meeting. When I spoke to correct an erroneous information, he formulated publicly a false accusation against me. My statement concerned the omitting my name during presentation of information about classes conducted in English at the Department of Physics in the academic year 2011/12. Both my statement and Zawodny’s attack were eliminated from the minutes of the Faculty meeting. This occurred in the presence of the University Rector Bronisław Marciniak and his Deputy Rectors, who were present that day at the Faculty meeting of the Department of Physics. Immediately after Zawodny’s attack, the Department’s head Ryszard Naskręcki closed the meeting, denying me the right to respond to the accusation.
In June 2012, the hitherto head of the Quantum Physics Section of the Department of Physics AMU was suddenly removed from his post. He was replaced with Adam Lipowski. The course of events shows that Lipowski was needed to carry out the next provocation against me. On Juy 3, 2012, the departmental office issued a false document referring to my alleged participation in the work of another section of the Department of Physics of Adam Mickiewicz University. The main role in this provocation was played by Adam Lipowski. In 2012, my name was omitted again from the list of persons receiving financial reward for publications in 2011. When I needed Lipowski’s signature, as new head of the Section, for the approval of my trip to conference at the Trinity College in Cambridge, I put an appropriate document in his mailbox in the Sections’ secretary office. Since he has not picked up his mail for a week, I was forced to visit him in the departmental office where he had his second desk as deputy head of the Department. Lipowski presented a form dated July 3, 2012. He said the signing of this form was necessary to pay my 2011 publication bonus. I expressed my doubts regarding the way the document was formulated, because the form contained the research topic from another section. When I received a copy of this document later, after it has been signed by other persons, it was clear that Lipowski deceived me. What was presented by Lipowski as confirmation of receiving the publication bonus and was a one-page document, was now a contract no. WF/190/2012 and had two pages. At the moment of signing I did not know about the existence of any other page of the document. Umowa jest fałszywa, ponieważ
1. I took up the research topic of nonlinear dynamics of neurons, including resonance neurons, entirely on my own, independently, in the Fall of 2008. I have been carrying out this research individually and independently ever since. No one suggested or requested me to do this work. In this research I have never used the computer equipment of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. As a result of repressions applied against me at the Department of Physics, I used my private computer equipment. In the early stage I used the computational account which I opened at the Computing Center of the Academic Computer Network in Gdańsk. Soon, I stopped using that account, leaving it open only as an option, and I carried out all the computational work on my private computers. This was a sad necessity, when I was faced with continuing harassment, repression, making my work more difficult, and humiliation from other members of the Department.
2. The stamp was added on the second page of the contract, stating “I confirm that the work specified in the contract does not belong to the statutory duties of the mandatory, resulting from the employment contract at the Adam Mickiewicz University, and will be performed outside the statutory working time”. The signature “A. Lipowski” was added to the stamp. This statement is false.
So, the Department of Physics functionaries have done their best to make my work and my existence at the Department most difficult, and when they have failed to block my habilitation, they decided to produce false documents and fabricated the aforementioned contract. This was an attempt to steal the intellectual property of my discoveries in the area of nonlinear dynamics of neurons, as well as intense preparation for the decision to fire me from the University.
As a result, institutional reports on scientific activity prepared for the Ministry of Science between 2009 and 2013 must have contained false information.
I was permanently excluded from contributing to the list of themes of research carried out at the Department of Physics. When on 9 October 2012 I submitted a letter to Department’s head Antoni Wójcik requesting to add the following items to the list of departmental research themes:
Properties of superconducting states with impurities and magnetic interactions
Nonlinear dynamics of neurons and neural systems,
I received a negative reply.
The department’s leadership and members of the Quantum Physics Section did not inform me about the purchase of advanced computer equipment of high value and its location in one of the Section’s rooms. Under normal circumstances, such information is shared with all members of departmental scientific community. This fact emphasizes the pathology and the total exclusion of my person from the departmental community.
Adam Lipowski attributed to me false titles of research themes as allegedly offered by the Quantum Physics Section to candidates for the Master’s degree.
I was assigned teaching assignments by the Department irrationally and in conflict with my scientific profile. I was not consulted on this issue and the information about student curricula was not shared with me. A detailed program of each class should be compatible with the framework established by the curriculum, whose aim is to release graduates possessing the relevant knowledge.
The refusal to share the information about student curricula and the refusal to consult my teaching appointments with me is a demonstration of (1) degrading treatment, (2) possible absence of a proper curriculum. I was forced to teach computer-related classes and simultaneously, my image as a scientist was falsified. The aim of the falsifications was to create and maintain a false opinion about me among the scientists.
Student evaluations of my classes, which were conducted for some years at end of semester, contained false opinions.
During the meeting with the Adam Mickiewicz University Rector Bronisław Marciniak, which took place on 25 June 2015 on my initiative, I presented information about the manufacturing of false documents related to me. The Head of the Department of Physics Antoni Wójcik was present during the meeting. Rector refused to engage. Earlier, I had to ask for the meeting multiple times. The Rector’s office did not respond to my emails. This is a derogatory treatment.
The Department’s Head office also manipulated statements about the place of the so-called primary employment, which were to be submitted in accordance with the relevant regulation in the law on higher education. One is led naturally to the conclusion that this was an attempt to falsify the facty the University was the place of my primary employment from 1 October 1995 until now, with the exception of the year from 1 October 1997 to 30 September 1998.
The minutes of the Department of Physics Faculty meeting from 18 September 2015 completely distorted my statement, which took more than two minutes. The minutes contain only a couple of manipulated sentences.
On 18 September 2015, I submitted in the University Main Library several requests for the publications of Andrzej Werblan, the leading ideologue of the Polish Communists. Publications were listed in the paper catalogue, although not in the electronic one. The Library refused to let me borrow his books. The library clerk informed that these publications would be available within a month, after appropriate records in the electronic catalogue have been created. I was to receive an email, when I could check-out Werblan’s books. I have not received that email to this day.
On October 29, 2015, I received a letter signed by the Deputy Rector Andrzej Lesicki of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, informing that I was dismissed from my job. My employment was to end on 29 February 2016.
One should remember that firing from university a professor with habilitation is rather unheard of.
The following persons participated in criminal activities against me:
Wojciech Nawrocik, Department of Physics, AMU
Andrzej Dobek, Department of Physics, AMU
Bogusław Mróz, Department of Physics, AMU
Stefan Jurga, Department of Physics, AMU
Leon Kowalewski, Department of Physics, AMU
Ryszard Naskręcki, Department of Physics, AMU
Marek Thomas, Department of Physics, AMU
Zbigniew Jacyna-Onyszkiewicz, Department of Physics, AMU
Piotr Tomczak, Department of Physics, AMU
Adam Lipowski, Department of Physics, AMU
Krzysztof Grygiel, Department of Physics, AMU
Antoni Wójcik, Department of Physics, AMU
Katarzyna Panek, Department of Physics, AMU
Grzegorz Musiał, Department of Physics, AMU
Bronisław Marciniak, Rector, AMU
Andrzej Lesicki, Deputy Rector of Human Resources and University Development, AMU
Roman Micnas, Department of Physics, AMU
Krzysztof Gibasiewicz, Department of Physics, AMU
Rufin Makarewicz, Department of Physics, AMU
Michał Kurzyński, Department of Physics, AMU
Andrzej Koper, Department of Physics, AMU
Roman Zawodny, Department of Physics, AMU
Ryszard Tadeusiewicz, former Rector of Academy of Mining and Metallurgy, Kraków
Włodzisław Duch, Nicholas Copernicus University, Toruń
Zbigniew Gawryś, Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw
Here is a list of some types of hostile acts against me carried out by university employees:
- Falsification of documentation about the course of my work
- Obstruction of professional advance
- Hiding information influencing the results of my work
- Delivering false information, resulting in errors or waste of time when carrying out various tasks
- Assigning tasks below competence
- Severely restricting areas of autonomy and responsibility
- Ignoring, excluding, and shunning
- Exclusion from reviewing Master’s theses, PhD theses, and articles in Polish scientific journals
- Expressing offensing remarks about me
- Shouting, expressing anger and rage towards me
- Intimidation in the following forms: invading personal and private space, blocking the passage
- Suggesting that I should resign voluntarily
- Hostile reception in an office by university officials
- Ignoring opinions and views
- Raising unfounded accusations
- Applying pressure to discourage from demanding equipment necessary for the job and from demanding respect for basic rights, such as covering travel expenses to conferences.
- Obstructing the process of normal work
- Refusal to assing tasks and duties in agreement with the level of professional competence
- Imposing tasks, which are too simple or meaningless
- Blocking every initiative on my part
- Excluding from projects of social character, such as organizational comittees of scientific conferences, departmental committees, departmental student admission committees, and committees overseeing professional advance of department members.
- Assigning tasks, which obviously remain outside normal duties associated with the job
- Teaching assignments, which do not require PhD in Physics
- Arranging provocations against me
- Unfounded public attacks during departmental faculty meetings and intimidation aimed at preventing me from speaking and expressing opinions
- Dereliction of duty by the leadership of the Department and of the University as stated by law, e.g. in the process of habilitation, and failure to provide safe working environment
- Not answering my correspondence in the form of electroni mail messages and letters
- Falsification of my scientific identity and professional image
- Omitting my name from lists of articles authored by department members, which were rewarded financially
- Depreciating importance of my scientific and teaching achievements
- Arranging situation resulting in a financial loss
- Forcing to bear costs of employment such as paying for basic supplies, books, and job-related equipment
- Publishing false titles of proposed Master’s theses and attributing them to me
- Refusing access to documents
- Attempts of theft of intellectual property
- Pressuring to comit acts against the law
Actions of people frpm academic and scientific institutions have clearly aimed at maximally hindering and destroying my scientific career. The goal was to sabotage my work by continuously producing stressful and humiliating situations, ideally causing traumatic reaction.
During my entire employment at the University I was excluded from teaching students of pure physics. This was acute discrimination and a significant obstruction of professional advance.
I was excluded from reviewing Master’s of doctoral theses. I was never a member of any committee deciding about professional advance. I have never been asked to review an article submitted to any Polish scientific journal. At the same time editors of well known and highly respected foreign journals were sending me articles of foreign authors to review.
I have never been allowed to present results of my research in the form of conference lecture. In July 2012, I presented a lecture at a conference in Trinity College in Cambridge, where I was the only person from the block of Communist countries to present research in this form. At the same time the functionaries of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań were doing everything to block my scientific work, steal my intellectual property and to fire me from the university.
Both organizational structure and decisions of assigning administrative and managerial positions were arranged with the aim of maximally enabling bullying, harassment and persecution. One of particularly important moves was the decision to divide faculty meetings in two. There were two parts of monthly faculty meetings instead of one. All members of the Department having a habilitation should be members of the Departmental Council and should be participating in the Faculty meetings. Hovewer, after splitting the Faculty meetings in two in 2008, active participation in one part of the meeting became restricted. This was the part, during which more important matters were discussed and voted on. Participants of restricted meetings were selected by voting from all members of the Departmental Council. The restricted group was about half the size of the Departmental Council. All the key decisions were made by the restricted group. The meetings of the unrestricted group of the Departmental Council were devoted to less important matters.
I have provided information about continuous violations of my fundamental rights to the head of the section, Department heads, and top University officials, as well as to the Minister of Science and Higher Education, Prime Minister, and President.
State documents referring to my family are falsified as well.
The Institute of National Remembrance claims in a letter from 2014 that my father was born near Sejny in what is now Podlaskie Voivodship. [My father was born in Krejwańce in Oszmiana county in the area of Poland which was annexed by the Soviet Union after WWII].
My mother’s death certificate issued on 6 December 2014 in Kętrzyn incorrectly states that Irena Borkowska, maiden name Ostrowska, was daughter of Elżbieta Ostrowska, maiden name “Girjato”. The correct form of this name is Giriat.
Poland’s National Library converted my book “Języki skryptowe” [Scripting languages], published in 2006 into digital format and made it available online without my permission. I am the author of the book and I hold the copyright to it. The Library classified this book incorrectly in its catalogue. Also my monograph “Nonlinear Dynamics of Hodgkin-Huxley Neurons” from 2010 was classified incorrectly in the National Library’s catalogue. I sent a letter to the Library’s Director in March 2013 and informed him about my disapproval regarding the creation of the digital form of “Języki skryptowe”. Despite this, the Library has not removed the digital version of “Języki skryptowe” from its offering.
The editorial office of the Polish scientific journal Acta Physica Polonica A, located in the Institute of Physics of the Polish Academy of Science in Warsaw, altered the text of my article Response of the Hodgkin-Huxley Neuron to a Periodic Sequence of Biphasic Pulses without my permission. I submitted the article in 2013. The character of these changes and a very unusual behaviour of the editorial office prove the intention to falsify the article. When submitting the article, I provided the editor with the correct text. Earlier in 2012, the same editor ial office attempted to damage my paper Multimodal Transition and Excitability of a Neural Oscillator. The correct form of the key set of equations was substituted with an incorrect one, which did not make any sense at all.
On 28 October 2015, the day before the postman delivered the University’s letter of dismissal was delivered, I received an email from a person unknown to me, informing about the intention of creating a Wikipedia profile for me. The Internet is an area of intense activity of the functionaries. They decided to extend control of my public image into the Internet. I objected to it. They did this anyway. On 29 October 2015, I received the letter from the office of the Rector (i.e.President) of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań terminating my employment. There is, of course, no random coincidence. The vast majority of Polish and foreign scientists known to me do not have a Wikipedia profile.
Taking into account the totality of actions of the state apparatus against members of my family, I must say that we are faced with organized criminal activity against me, my wife, and our daughter.
The persons governing Poland today bear full responsibility for active measures, активные мероприятия, as they are known in the language of Communist intelligence, which are directed against me, my wife Małgorzata Głuchowska, and our daughter […]. Some circumstances indicate the possible involvement of a foreign intelligence service.
The matters presented in this text are only a small part of a larger whole.
Yours sincerely,
Dr hab. Lech S. Borkowski
(*) The position of an adiunkt can be described as a long-term postdoctoral position.
You must be logged in to post a comment.