He was arrested on 24 April 1975, and on 8 April 1976, was sentenced by a military court in Warsaw to 25 years of prison,[3] 10 years suspension of civic rights, demotion to private, forfeiture of all his property for having committed espionage since 1964 on behalf of an unnamed NATO country, and his name was erased from Polish sporting records.
[1] Ten years later, he was to have been included in one of the spy exchanges at Berlin's Glienicke Bridge but chose to remain in Poland and spent the rest of his life as a painter and faith healer in Warsaw, where he died.
[2] Pawlowski was slightly built and about five feet nine inches tall, but he was exceptionally graceful, his body advancing and retreating with such control that his torso seemed not to move as his legs carried him away from his opponent.
He would do crazy actions, just so he could get the final hit with a flick to the wrist or such a simple movement that the audience would gasp at his audacity.
[6] One team mate recalls Pawlowski's lessons with his Hungarian coach, Janos Kevey, their blades moving so fast that even an experienced onlooker could not follow the action.
He received the highest decorations the state could bestow, and under his auspices fencing grew into one of his country's most popular sports.
He lived in the centre of Warsaw in a five-room apartment full of antique furniture, expensive books and good paintings.
In 1973 he reached the final (that is, a round-robin of six fencers) for the last time, aged 42, and only narrowly missed a medal, nearly 20 years after his first.
It leaked out that during 1974 a NATO spy had confessed that one of his five co-agents was "Pawel" – Pawlowski's principal nickname (although he had several others, including "Gracz", "The Card Player", because of his fondness for poker).
Thus, as Neue Zürcher Zeitung put it, "the news of his arrest shocked the Polish public, especially the army and young people, for whom he was almost a national idol".
Almost immediately, influential figures in the government and in the army tried to cover up the affair, but the Russian representative to the Warsaw Pact High Command demanded the death penalty.
It gave him a sentence that had no standing under Polish law – 25 years' imprisonment, for espionage "on behalf of an undesignated Nato country".
There was talk that Pawlowski avoided death because he used to go shooting – he was a fine marksman – with Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Polish premier; but the court declared that he had been spared because he had admitted his crimes, revealed his contacts and provided a detailed account of his spying activities.
As to what secrets a sportsman could have access, Pawlowski knew several senior officers as friends and moved in exalted circles; he was said to have passed on radar codes for military aircraft.
According to his own account, there were seven men in his cell, paedophiles, psychopaths and mentally deranged prisoners – "the worst types – people on the edge of society".
Next was the Polish national championships; but parents of young fencers complained that they did not want their sons shaking hands with a traitor.
For a while the government did nothing, but after Pawlowski started making speeches proclaiming his innocence his trial papers were released, and in 1991 a leading magazine, Prawo i Zycie ("Law and Life"), revealed that since August 1955 Pawlowski had been spying for the state against his own team mates – telling the security services which athletes were planning to defect, who supported Israel in the Middle East war, who might be open to approaches.
"My heart is Polish, my mind American," he would say; but East European fencers laughed at the idea of his motive being ideological: "With Jerzy it was always money."