Lieberman was born into a
Jewish family in
Drohobycz,
Galicia, then part of
Austro-Hungary. From 1907 to 1914 and from 1917 to 1918, he was a member of parliament in
Vienna. During
World War I he joined the
Polish Legions of
Józef Piłsudski as a private. He was promoted to the rank of lieutenant and took part in the
Battle of Kostiuchnówka, for which he was awarded the
Polish Cross of Valor. During the
Oath crisis, when Polish troops refused to swear allegiance to Emperor
Wilhelm II of Germany, Lieberman served as the lawyer for the Polish soldiers who were charged with treason by the German authorities. s After World War I Lieberman became a leader of the
Polish Socialist Party (
PPS), serving on its executive committee. In January 1919 he became a member of the Polish
Sejm (parliament). In 1923 he successfully defended the
Kraków workers charged in the aftermath of the
1923 Kraków riot. at the new Jewish cemetery in
Przemyśl After the
May 1926 ''Coup d'État'', he opposed Piłsudski. He was arrested and beaten by the police and then sentenced in the 1931–32
Brest trials to two and a half year in prison. Rather than serving the sentence he emigrated to
France. While abroad he supported the republican cause in the
Spanish Civil War and published a critical response to
Marcel Déat's pamphlet
Why Die for Danzig? which advocated appeasement of
Hitler. During
World War II, after the 1939
German invasion of Poland, Lieberman joined
Władysław Sikorski's
Polish government-in-exile in
London, England. From 3 September 1941 to 20 October 1941, Lieberman was the government's minister of justice. He died in 1941.
Award In 1941 Lieberman was posthumously awarded Poland's highest
decoration, the
Order of the White Eagle, by the President of the Government in Exile
Władysław Raczkiewicz, in recognition of his exceptional services to
Poland. ==References==