A career soldier, General Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski (born 1923) became Poland's head of state in 1981. After reaching a historic compromise with the Solidarity trade unions he took the presidency in 1989 but resigned 18 months later.

Wojciech Jaruzelski was born in Kurów near Pulawy in the Lublin province on July 6, 1923. The son of a Polish landed gentry family, his origins can scarcely be called proletarian, as he came from interwar Poland's social elite. His father was said to have served in the cavalry, the prestige arm of the interwar Polish army. His family's ties to eastern Poland and its social milieu made him one of the last major Polish political figures to originate from the Kresy, the Russo-Polish borderlands.

Little is known of Jaruzelski's early years except that he was educated at a Catholic boarding school near Warsaw that was highly regarded as an establishment school. World War II...