quoted Jan T. Gross, who argued that many Jews who worked for the Communist party cut their ties with their culture (Jewish, Polish, or Russian), and tried to represent the interests of international communism only, or at least that of the local Communist government. Leszek W. Gluchowski wrote:It is difficult to assess when the Polish Jews who had volunteered to serve or remain in the postwar communist security forces began to realize, however, what Soviet Jews had realized earlier, that under Stalin, as Arkady Vaksberg put it: "if someone named Rabinovich was in charge of a mass execution, he was perceived not simply as a Cheka boss but as a Jew, while if someone named Abramovich was in charge of a mass epidemic countermeasure, he was perceived not as a Jew but as a good doctor."Among the notable Jewish officials of the Polish secret police and security services were Minister Jakub Berman, Joseph Stalin's right hand in the PRL; Vice-minister Roman Romkowski (deputy head of MBP), Dir. Julia Brystiger (5th Dept.), Dir. Anatol Fejgin (10th Dept. or the notorious Special Bureau), deputy Dir. Józef Światło (10th Dept.), Col. Józef Różański among others. Światło, "a torture master", defected to the West in 1953, while Romkowski and Różański would find themselves among the Jewish scapegoats for Polish Stalinism in the political upheavals following Stalin's death, both sentenced to 15 years in prison on 11 November 1957 for gross violations of human rights law and abuse of power, but released 1964. In 1956, over 9,000 socialist and populist politicians were released from prison. A few Jewish functionaries of the security forces were brought to court in the process of de-Stalinization. According to Heather Laskey, it was not a coincidence that the high ranking Stalinist security officers put on trial by Gomułka were Jews. Władysław Gomułka was captured by Światło, imprisoned by Romkowski in 1951, and interrogated by both, him and Fejgin. Gomułka escaped physical torture only as a close associate of Joseph Stalin, and was released three years later. According to some sources, the categorization of the security forces as a Jewish institution—as disseminated in the post-war anti-communist press at various times—was rooted in Żydokomuna: the belief that the secret police was predominantly Jewish became one of the factors contributing to the post-war view of Jews as agents of the security forces. The Żydokomuna sentiment reappeared at times of severe political and socioeconomic