Roman Romkowski born Menasche Grünspan[1] also known as Nasiek (Natan) Grinszpan-Kikiel,[2] (February 16, 1907 – July 12, 1968)[3] was a Polish communist official trained by Comintern in Moscow.

[4] After the Soviet takeover of Poland Romkowski settled in Warsaw[5] and became second in command (the deputy minister)[2] in the Ministry of Public Security (MBP or colloquially UB) during the late 1940s and early 1950s.

[2] Along with several other high functionaries including Stanisław Radkiewicz, Anatol Fejgin, Józef Różański, Julia Brystiger and the chief supervisor of Polish State Security Services, Minister Jakub Berman from the Politburo, Romkowski came to symbolize communist terror in postwar Poland.

The progressive radicalization of his views led him to join the Young Communist League of Poland (ZMKwP), established on March 17, 1922.

As he claimed, he actively participated in the life of the prison commune during this time, including leading hunger strikes and catching up on Marxism-Leninism studies.

In later years, Romkowski applied his methods of managing informant networks to combat various "enemies of the people's government", including the Catholic Church and alleged economic saboteurs.

From February 24, 1949, to 1954, he was a member of the Security Commission of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party (KC PZPR), which supervised the apparatus of Stalinist repression in Poland.

[10] Romkowski directly supervised investigations and interrogations of suspected party members, including the arrest and questioning of Władysław Gomułka in 1951-1952.

[1] Romkowski was arrested on April 23, 1956, during the Polish October,[7] and brought to trial along with functionaries responsible for gross violations of human rights law and their abuse of power.

[11] Historian Heather Laskey alleges that it was probably not a coincidence that the high ranking Stalinist security officers put on trial by Gomułka were Jews.

[7][11] A well-known writer Kazimierz Moczarski from AK, interrogated by Romkowski's subordinates from January 9, 1949, till June 6, 1951, described 49 different types of torture he endured.

Sleep deprivation, resulting in near-madness – meant standing upright in a narrow cell for seven to nine days with frequent blows to the face – a hallucinatory method called by the interrogators "Zakopane".

Jakub Berman, the chief supervisor of State Security Services incriminated by Józef Światło who defected to the West, resigned from his Politburo post in May and was evaluated by the 20th Congress, which launched a process of partial democratisation of Polish political as well as economic life.

The number of security agents at the ministry was cut by 22%, and 9,000 socialist and populist politicians were released from prison on top of some 34,644 detainees across the country.