Operation Bridge (“Most”)

The decision

In February 1990 the Israeli foreign minister Moshe Arens asked Poland to act as a transit point. Foreign Minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski backed the idea, and President Wojciech Jaruzelski and Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki accepted it. At the end of March 1990, during a visit to the USA, Mazowiecki publicly announced that Poland would help transport Soviet Jews to Israel.¹

In English-language literature the operation appears as “Operation Bridge”; the Polish studies cited by the author call it Operation “Most”.¹

Threats

In mid-March 1990 the Beirut daily “As-Safir” published a threatening letter. On 30 March 1990 in Beirut, Ewa and Bogdan Serkis, employees of the Animex company's representative office, were shot and wounded. At the end of March, bombs were planted in Athens under cars belonging to, among others, the Soviet, Hungarian and Czechoslovak embassies; cars of the Polish mission were mentioned as possible targets.¹

Protection

On 10 April 1990 the Minister of Internal Affairs set up a team to coordinate counterterrorism measures, headed by General Zdzisław Sarewicz. In early April the US Embassy announced that a counterterrorism team would come to Poland and Hungary; in Poland five American officials, including from the State Department and the Air Force, met representatives of the Polish authorities. In May 1990 a Mossad delegation visited Poland.¹

From June 1990 the emigrants at Okęcie were protected by the police (Milicja). Airport security was headed by Major Jerzy Dziewulski, who had undergone counterterrorism training in Israel. On 13 July 1990 the Minister of Internal Affairs, Krzysztof Kozłowski, ordered the creation of the GROM unit, trained by the Americans; it did not reach operational readiness in time for this operation.¹

Scale and state of knowledge

The author estimates that around 40,000 people travelled via Poland. He notes that this cannot be confirmed on the basis of fragmentary flight information, because the documentation has not been declassified. According to the author, there were no terrorist incidents during the operation itself.¹

Kozłowski draws on the archives of the IPN, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Chancellery of the Prime Minister and the Sejm, as well as on participants' memoirs and interviews. That is why this card carries the state-of-knowledge label “Classified”: the bulk of the documentation is still secret.¹