Mokotów prison

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The north side of the prison with the main entrance on Rakowiecka
Commemorative plaques attached to the outer wall for those of the opposition who were murdered here as part of the Stalinist purges in the post-war period. On the poster there is a portrait of the General of the Home Army , August Emil Fieldorf , who was executed on February 24, 1953 .
Memorial plaque for the victims of communist terror

The Mokotów Prison (also known as Rakowiecka Prison , Polish Więzienie mokotowskie or Więzienie na Rakowieckiej ) is a former penal institution at Ulica Rakowiecka 37 in the Warsaw district of Mokotów . The facility was built at the beginning of the 20th century and served various regimes in Poland as a prison for political prisoners and as a place of execution . In Warsaw, the institution is known as a site of torture and murder during the German occupation of Warsaw in World War II and as part of the Stalinist purges in Poland in the post-war period. The prison was one of the institutions on Rakowiecka that made this street a symbol of Polish oppression and Soviet arbitrariness, especially in the 1950s. Until 2016 the buildings served as a remand prison . Currently (2018) a museum with a memorial for exiled soldiers and political prisoners is being set up in the buildings .

history

The prison was built from 1902 to 1904 according to designs by Wiktor Junosza-Piotrowski and Henryk Julian Gay (a grandson of the architect Jan Jakub Gay ). It served the security and criminal police; up to 800 prisoners could be accommodated here. The approximately 60,000 square meter complex in the neo-Gothic style contained, in addition to the buildings with cells, several chapels of various faiths as well as an infirmary. With its own power supply and a connection to the municipal sewer system , the prison was one of the most modern facilities of its kind in the Russian Empire . After the uprisings from 1905 to 1907 were put down , it was rededicated as a prison for political prisoners.

First World War

During the German occupation of Warsaw ( Generalgouvernement Warsaw , 1915 to 1918) in the First World War , the prison (named as the prison in Mokotow , Polish: Więzienie Karne na Mokotowie ) was operated by a German authority, the Imperial German Prison Directorate Warsaw Mokotow (Polish: Cesarsko Niemiecka Dyrekcja Więzienia Warszawa Mokotów ).

After Poland's independence was restored in 1918, the prison was repaired with a school, library, gym and garden added. As a result, the facility was used as the central prison for the Polish public prosecutor's office until the outbreak of World War II. Executions were also carried out here. When the prison was converted into a prison "I. Class ”(sentences longer than three years, but no repeat offenders), up to 500 jobs were created in various production facilities to rehabilitate the inmates. This included carpentry, locksmithing, bakery and tailoring as well as a branch of the state security printing company PWPW .

Second World War

During the German occupation of Warsaw, the Mokotów Prison became a synonym for the brutal injustice that the occupiers inflicted on the Polish population. In addition to the prison in the Gestapo headquarters in today's Aleja Szucha (then Police Street ) and the no longer existing buildings in Ulica Daniłowiczowska 7 , Pawiak and Serbia , the Gestapo , security service and security police used the facility in Rakowiecka for imprisonment, torture and execution by Polish politicians, members of the resistance and the intelligentsia and arbitrarily arrested Warsaw residents . Civilians arrested in retaliation for military actions by the resistance were also housed here.

Most of the inmates who had not already been executed in the institution or who died of torture were transferred to other prisons (especially Pawiak / Serbia) and concentration camps or were driven to mass execution sites in the Warsaw area in secret night operations. One such place was Palmiry .

The prison was extremely overcrowded under German occupation - up to 2,500 men and women were crammed together here.

Warsaw Uprising

After the Warsaw Uprising broke out , Mokotów Prison was one of the Home Army's first targets . On August 1, 1944 the facility was attacked by the garnet unit of the WSOP (Wojskowa Służba Ochrony Powstania; IV Rejonu AK - Obwód V "Mokotów") . The insurgents were able to penetrate part of the building and free around 300 inmates. Other areas, however, were held by German guards and SS units who were quickly brought in. These units also succeeded in retaking the buildings occupied by the rebels. As a retaliatory measure , the next day (August 2, 1944) around 600 prisoners were shot by members of an SS Panzer Grenadier unit. In the further course of the fighting, the Rakowiecka was a center of German resistance in the Mokotów district. Despite further attempts at conquest by the Home Army, the Germans were able to hold the prison complex and surrounding buildings until the uprising was put down. During the subsequent, planned destruction of the city of Warsaw , the prison belonged to the so-called "German district" that was excluded from extermination and was therefore not blown up.

post war period

After the Red Army marched into Warsaw, Mokotów Prison was used to detain German war criminals as well as political prisoners from the NKVD and the Soviet-controlled Polish secret service.

According to a report from 1952 in the Ostpreußenblatt , the conditions for the German prisoners in Mokotów were harsh. The article referred to the statements of a released prisoner who complained about overcrowding in the cells, heavy labor and abuse, inadequate hygienic conditions and poor catering in the detention center.

Jürgen Stroop before the Polish War Crimes Court in 1951
Witold Pilecki , in 1947 in the Mokotów prison

"Conversations with the executioner"

The Polish resistance fighter and journalist Kazimierz Moczarski was housed in a cell from March 2 to November 11, 1949 with Jürgen Stroop , the former commander in charge of the suppression of the ghetto uprising in Warsaw (1943) . Moczarski later processed the extensive conversations held there about Stroop's life and work during National Socialism in the notes “Rozmowy z katem” ( German “Conversations with the Executioner” ), which were initially published in a Polish magazine and later as a book - also in Germany were.  

Stalinist purges

From the end of the war until 1956, the Polish secret police, led by the Ministry of Public Security , also used the prison as a central location for political prisoners. Thousands of regime critics , former members of the Home Army and the Polish armed forces and independence activists deployed abroad were incarcerated here. After several months to several years in prison (using brutal interrogation methods), the prisoners were either transferred to other prisons ( Montelupich in Kraków , the castle prison in Lublin and institutions in Wronki , Rawicz , Strzelce Opolskie , Sztum , Fordon and Inowrocław ) or murdered. According to official information, 350 executions were carried out during this period. Those executed were buried secretly and unmarked in the Powązki cemetery , the Warsaw cemeteries in Mokotów and Stary Służew , in the open fields in Pole Mokotowskie and in Kabaty and Okęcie .

The executions were carried out in the prison boiler room with a shot in the neck . Most of these shootings were carried out by Sergeant Piotr Śmietański, who was therefore referred to as the “executioner of Mokotów Prison” (Polish: “Kat z Mokotowa” ). A later prosecution of the NCO failed because of his hiding. All information about him had previously been removed from the files of the State Security and the Ministry of Defense. Studies conducted by the Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (IPN) Śmietański probably died in the early 1950s to tuberculosis . The head of the prison during the political cleansing - often also a participant in the executions - was Alojzy Grabicki.

In October 2012, at the instigation of the IPN, 117 corpses were exhumed from the Powązki cemetery in Warsaw. All of them could be assigned to executions in Mokotów Prison. The exhumation will be followed by others at other mass graves .

Democratic opposition

Even if, from 1956, the prisons in Poland were no longer subordinate to the Ministry of the Interior (Polish Ministerstwo Spraw Wewnętrznych ), which had been established in the meantime, and rehabilitation measures began to be introduced, the Polish secret service ( Służba Bezpieczeństwa ) kept separate parts in some institutions to accommodate "special" Prisoners (MSW special blocks) - which were hardly used. In 1968, a group of students who had taken part in demonstrations critical of the regime ( March riots ) were admitted to this area of ​​the prison in Rakowiecka for a short period of time. After martial law was proclaimed in Poland in 1981, the prison became a place where leading Solidarność members (formerly the Committee for the Defense of Workers (KOR)) were detained for a longer period of time . Many activists have been locked up here - some in solitary confinement - and charged. The journalist Adam Michnik in particular succeeded in smuggling letters outside despite being in solitary confinement. There was contact with and multiple publications in German media, such as Spiegel and Die Zeit . Excerpts were published in issue 27/83 of Der Spiegel in which Michnik also comments on his method.

The future politician Zbigniew Romaszewski sat from August 1982 to July 1984 as a remand prisoner one in Mokotów Prison. After his release, he described life in the prison.

“Conditions worsened during my detention due to the increase in the number of inmates. When I arrived there were four people in each cell, when I was released there were 10 or 12 ... I was treated fairly properly during my two year stay as I was a prominent case. My wife Zofia was treated much worse ... "

- Herman Schwartz and Mary C. Schwartz, Poland. Prison Conditions in Poland, June, 1988

After the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, the partial responsibility of the secret service was lifted and the entire facility was rebuilt and renovated.

today

Until 2016, the facility was used as a remand prison by the Warsaw Public Prosecutor's Office for temporarily arrested men. The facility could accommodate up to 951 prisoners; these included 49 places for alcoholics and 45 for dangerous prisoners. The staff consisted of around 400 civil servants and 30 civilian employees. On March 1, 2016, the complex was closed as a prison and handed over to the jurisdiction of the IPN, which will establish a museum and a memorial for exiled soldiers and political prisoners in the People's Republic of Poland. The museum is scheduled to open in 2019.

Known inmates

Interwar period (1918–1939)

German occupation (1939–1945)

War Crimes Trials (1945–1952)

Stalinist persecution (1945–1956)

Democracy Movement (1956–1989)

Known inmates (since 1989)

Web links

Commons : Mokotów Prison  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

References and comments

  1. ↑ Other institutions located here were the Ministry of the Interior, Służba Bezpieczeństwa , the General Staff of the Armed Forces and the "Moskva" movie theater
  2. ↑ according to Ewa Kobylińska and Andreas Lawaty (eds.), Remember, forget, suppress. Polish and German experiences , ISBN 3-447-04080-7 , Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1998, p. 98
  3. ↑ Piotr Makhaisky: Muzeum w areszcie . Ed .: "Gazeta Wyborcza". May 11, 2016, ISSN  0860-908X , p. 3 .
  4. ↑ a b according to Julius A. Chroscicki and Andrzej Rottermund, Architectural Atlas of Warsaw , 1st edition, Arkady, Warsaw 1978, p. 195
  5. ↑ according to Note in the Ordinance Gazette for the General Government of Warsaw. Dziennik rozporządzeń dla Generał-gubernatorstwa Warszawskiego , No. 1–126, September 11, 1915 to October 12, 1918, issue 82–126, p. 106
  6. ↑ Even today, this production is located in a part of the former prison grounds that is separate from the prison, on Aleja Niepodległości
  7. ↑ according to Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak, The Warsaw Ghetto. A Guide to the Perished City , ISBN 978-0-300-11234-4 , New Haven / London 2007
  8. ↑ according to Janusz Piekalkiewicz, Battle for Warsaw. Stalin's betrayal of the Polish Home Army in 1944 , FA Herbig Verlagbuchhandlung, ISBN 3-7766-1699-7 , Munich 1994, p. 49
  9. ↑ according to The hell of Mokotow (PDF; 9.9 MB), in: Ostpreußenblatt , issue 35 of December 15, 1952, p. 2, Hamburg
  10. ↑ according to Information on Kazimierz Moczarski on the website "Deutsche & Polen" of Rundfunks Berlin-Brandenburg rbb (accessed on January 7, 2013)
  11. ↑ Kazimierz Moczarski, Conversations with the Executioner , 2nd edition, original: Rozmowy z katem , Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1984
  12. ↑ a b according to Information 117 victims of Stalinism in Warsaw exhumed on Polskie Radio's international service on October 26, 2012 (accessed January 7, 2013)
  13. ↑ according to Profil , Volume 14, Wirtschaftstrend Zeitschriftenverlag, Vienna 1983, p. 40 (accessed on January 7, 2013)
  14. ↑ according to Jan Józef Lipski, KOR. A History of the Workers' Defense Committee in Poland, 1976-1981 , University of California Press, Berkeley 1985, ISBN 0-520-05243-9 , pp. 461 f.
  15. ↑ a b c according to Peter Schweizer, Victory. The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy that hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union , ISBN 0-87113-633-3 , The Atlantic Monthly Press, New York 1994, [1] p. 183
  16. ↑ according to Christian Schmidt-Häuer, article show trial of the accused in the newspaper Die Zeit
  17. ↑ according to Article I will not ask for mercy in the magazine Der Spiegel of July 4, 1983
  18. ↑ according to Herman Schwartz and Mary C. Schwartz, Poland. Prison Conditions in Poland, June, 1988 , ISBN 0-938579-62-2 , Human Rights Watch, New York 1988, p. 47 (in English)
  19. ↑ according to a biography of Leo Jogiches on DKP Saxony-Anhalt
  20. ↑ according to Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak, The Warsaw Ghetto. A Guide to the Perished City , ISBN 978-0-300-11234-4 , New Haven / London 2007
  21. ↑ according to Dieter Schenk, Hitler's husband in Danzig, ISBN 978-3-8012-5029-4 , Dietz, 2000, p. 287
  22. ↑ according to Information "The Stay" film based on the novel by Hermann Kant on the website of the Goethe Institute Warsaw (accessed on January 7, 2013)
  23. ↑ a b according to Jan Chłosta, Edyta Derecka (transl.), Known and Unknown Allensteiners of the 19th and 20th Centuries , Publisher: Książnica Polska, 1996, p. 240
  24. ↑ according to Gerd Kaiser, Against the Current , in: The little paper. Biennial for Politics, Art and Economy , Volume 4, Number 20 from October 3, 2011 (accessed on January 7, 2013)
  25. ↑ according to Short biography of Adam Doboszyński on the website ( Memento from December 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Virtual Shtetl (accessed on January 7, 2013)
  26. ↑ according to information on the website of the Association for the Remembrance of the Warsaw Uprising (Stowarzyszenie Pamięci Powstania Warszawskiego 1944)
  27. ↑ according to Günther Schulz, Church in the East. Studies on Eastern European Church History and Church Studies , Volume 37, ISBN 3-525-56393-0 , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1994, p. 5
  28. ↑ according to Article time mirror. Too much of democracy in: Die Zeit , No. 23/1983 of July 3, 1983 (retrieved from: Zeit Online on January 7, 2013)

Coordinates: 52 ° 12 ′ 26 ″  N , 21 ° 0 ′ 37 ″  E