Maciej Damięcki — An Actor with a Double Life

On January 4, 1975, I went with a friend to a children’s event at the Congress Hall (Sala Kongresowa) in Warsaw — one of the most prestigious indoor venues in Poland at the time. It was there that I met Maciej Damięcki (1944–2023), a well-known Polish stage and film actor.

Maciej Damięcki

Although I remember him from several television and film roles, back then I primarily associated him with the popular children’s TV program “Pora na Telesfora” (“Time for Telesfor”), which he hosted. For context, Telesfor was a dragon hand puppet — a beloved character among Polish children of that era. Damięcki also had an older brother, Damian, who was an actor as well and looked very much like him. They were so alike that people often confused the two, sometimes even assuming they were twins.

Only recently did I learn that for 16 years Damięcki had been a collaborator of the Służba Bezpieczeństwa (Security Service, commonly known as SB) — the communist secret police in the People’s Republic of Poland. During that time, he reportedly provided information about prominent figures in the acting community. This cooperation is said to have ended only in 1989, with the collapse of the communist system. The Security Service gave him the nickname "Twin".

According to available accounts, he agreed to cooperate after being detained by the Milicja Obywatelska (the state police of communist Poland) for driving under the influence. Among those he allegedly informed on were Daniel Olbrychski, Marek Kondrat, Piotr Fronczewski, and Gustaw Holoubek — all major figures in Polish cinema and theatre.

Interestingly, he is not believed to have received regular financial compensation for this cooperation, only small gifts from the SB.

An idealist? Or simply a man entangled in the difficult realities of his time…

Source: Wikimedia Commons

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Fifty years ago, on June 25, 1976, during one of my hiking trips in the mountains, I learned about the planned price increases that had been announced the previous day by Prime Minister Piotr Jaroszewicz. In my next blog post, I will describe both that event and one of its later consequences—the introduction of sugar ration coupons in August 1976.

I will publish that post on June 25, 2026, exactly fifty years after those events took place—it's hard to believe that half a century has already passed! In a sense, those developments marked one of the early steps in the process that eventually led to the collapse of communist Poland.

I hope you will join me for the story.

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Blogi są również dostępne w języku polskim/blogs are also available in the Polish language

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More from the author

This entry is part of a broader collection of personal research and historical documentation across multiple blogs:

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