Black curtains in a coach, loss of consciousness on the back seat, aides convinced that their boss was dying. This is not a scene from a thriller, but a passage from the latest book about Karol Nawrocki. And it is the president himself who tells the story.
“There was a moment of terror that I still remember very clearly”
The book Where Did Karol Nawrocki Come From? has just appeared in bookstores. It is an extensive book-length interview with the president, conducted by Prof. Andrzej Nowak and published by Biały Kruk. In one of the excerpts that have already appeared online, Nawrocki returns to an incident from the presidential campaign which, as he himself says, he will never forget.
“I was in a truly critical situation then. There was a moment of terror that I still remember very clearly,” the president says. He then adds, somewhat jokingly, but with a clear note of seriousness:
“I sometimes say that I won the presidential election in Dzierżoniów, although in fact it began earlier, in Ząbkowice Śląskie.”
Strange questions from journalists about one specific train
According to Nawrocki’s account, disturbing signals began even before the incident itself. That day, during heavy rain in Lower Silesia, the presidential candidate deviated from his planned route to see areas affected by flooding. It was a spontaneous decision, one that had not been included in the day’s schedule at all. It was then, he claims, that strange things began to happen.
“Television crews linked to my rival were also behaving strangely. Journalists suddenly appeared, some strange camera was following us,” Nawrocki says. What surprised him most, however, was what they were specifically asking about: not his programme, not the meeting, but solely whether he would manage to board a particular train between Ząbkowice Śląskie and Dzierżoniów, an unusual one, because that day he was supposed to travel that section by a regular regional train, rather than by his campaign bus.
A blow to the jaw and black curtains in the coach
After a five-minute speech outside the town hall in Ząbkowice Śląskie, on his way to the bus that was supposed to take him to the platform, Nawrocki felt, as he describes it, as though someone had suddenly “switched off his body.”
“I finish speaking and suddenly feel that something very bad is happening to me. A sudden weakness, as if I had taken a solid blow to the jaw,” he recalls.
Despite this, he tried to function normally, waving to people and speaking to them. He asked an aide for water, told them to lead him to the coach and lay him down on the floor.
What happened moments later was later described by his security guards as scenes straight out of a horror film.
“They said it looked like a fountain; they compared it to the film The Exorcist. I was kicking my legs, my body was jerking, I was vomiting compulsively,” the president recounts.
The coach was stopped, black curtains were drawn, and everyone except him got out onto the street. He lost consciousness. When he came to, his suit and the inside of the vehicle were, as he puts it, “completely splattered.”
“I was convinced you were dead”
The most moving part of the story concerns the reaction of his closest aides – Mikołaj, Jarek and Jakub. One of them, entering the darkened, silent coach after some time, was said to have told the president openly:
“I was convinced you were dead.”
The silence, closed windows and complete lack of contact made them genuinely believe, for a moment, that the worst had happened.
Nawrocki also recalls that from the very beginning of the campaign, his security detail had warned him against risky gestures, including kissing female voters’ hands, suggesting that this could be a way of administering poison to him. He himself claims that, despite the warnings, he did not change his behaviour.
Is this evidence of an attempted poisoning?
In the published excerpts, Nawrocki himself does not state unequivocally that he was poisoned. He describes the symptoms, the circumstances and his own impressions, calling the entire situation “something he still treats very seriously.” The book’s co-author, Prof. Andrzej Nowak, goes much further in his interpretation. In promotional material for the publication, he stated bluntly:
“They tried to poison Karol Nawrocki. Simply poison him, eliminate him from that campaign at a moment when it was already clear that he was heading for victory.”
Did someone really try to harm Karol Nawrocki during the campaign? For now, the only certain answer is that the president himself considered that episode one of the most difficult moments on his path to the Presidential Palace.