Draft:Konrad Szymczak

Konrad Szymczak - Polish World War II Officer and Partisan of the Underground State

Early Life

Konrad Szymczak, born in 1914 in the Posen (region) of the German Empire (Deutsches Kaiserreich), possibly in the city of Poznań. He then moved in with and later married Stefania (Mglej) Szymczak in a town named Maków Podhalański in Lesser Poland (Małopolska), an hour's drive south of Kraków in the Sucha County (Powiat suski).

Military Service

He trained in the army following the Polish–Soviet War 1918–1921 and became an Officer in the 21st Mountain Infantry Division (Poland), in the 3rd Podhale Rifles Regiment headquarters in Bielsko-Biała, aimed to defend along the southern border with Czechoslovakia but stationed in his home town of Maków with his unit.

On the 1st of September 1939, the beginning of the war, he fought against Wilhelm List's 14th Army (Wehrmacht) and notably against Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist's armored Panzer corps along the southern border against the Nazi German puppet state of Slovakia somewhere between the Peek of Babia Góra and the town of Zakopane.

During a course of roughly 22 days, he held the front bravely, facing the brute of Kleist's Panzer corps Blitzkrieg strategies, where his division was pushed behind the city of Kraków and later far past the city of Przemyśl. Then on the 22nd of September, he was defending the city of Lwów against both the Germans and the Soviets, surrounded on both sides. He was then captured by the Germans in Lwów as a prisoner of war and later sent by wagon to a prisoner of war camp back nearby Kraków.

During the voyage on the German wagon, he escaped and traveled all the way back to the town of Maków where he went into hiding with partisan members deep in a mountain forest camp for over three years during the course of the war near his home, down in the valley below. He then lived to carry on fighting as a secret partisan himself of the Polish underground state during the course of the war, recording and disrupting the movement of German resources by train and trucks and recording the atrocities of the Gestapo in the town, whose headquarters where located in the Villa named Willa Marysin on the other side of the town to where the camp was.

For more information on the camp and the partisans in the region refer to the book "Pokolenia Ziemi Makowskiej, część 2" on page 207, written by Jadwiga Sobczuk.

Cold War life

After the Second World War ended, the state of Poland became a subject of the Soviet Union, where Konrad was then noticed by the Polish People's Republic's government as a living war veteran and a threat to the state and was arrested at his home. He was quickly exiled and escorted by train to the Soviet Union, heading to a Gulag somewhere in Siberia. Sometime during his voyage, he escaped the wagon and headed back home to Maków once more.

He then lived the rest of his life in complete secrecy as a local Railway man but later changed profession to a wood carpenter to reduce his noticeability amongst society in the town of Maków, constructing baroque dark oak furniture.

He then suddenly contracted Gangrene on his toe after damaging it and it was promptly amputated. The Gangrene grew onwards to his foot which also amputated, and again to his leg and then thigh. Eventually, it grew to it abdomen where there was no recovering from. Konrad died in 1983 due to the infection.

He died without any commemoration for his bravery. The Polish People's Republic saw him as an enemy of the state, but also as he had "officially" died during the war, but rather survived and even made a family that survives to this day in the same home. He was buried in the cemetery of the church of Maria in Maków (Kościół Rzymskokatolicki zabytkowy) along with his wife Stefania, where they can still be seen today.