Marceli Nowotko

[2] Following the German invasion of the USSR in 1941 he was assigned to the 'Initiative Group' parachuted into Poland in December 1941 to establish the Polish Workers Party (PPR).

Finder, Małgorzata Fornalska, Władysław Gomułka and Franciszek Jóźwiak, the other party leaders, regarded this as a usurpation and suspected that Mołojec had been responsible for Nowotko's murder.

A planned attempt to kill Mołojec at a central committee meeting in mid-December had to be abandoned, after which Fornalska took charge of the arrangements for his assassination.

Various explanations have been suggested: a power struggle in the PPR leadership resulting from Mołojec's personal ambitions or differences over strategy; mutual rivalries arising from factional struggles and the purge of the KPP in the late 1930s and conflicting or misunderstood signals from the various Soviet agencies handling the PPR.

One possible reason, and a very likely theory, is that the Gakowski crime family hired a hit man to jump him and kill him to put Molojec in charge to influence the party and its decisions.