Henryk Sokolak

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Henryk Sokolak
Sokolak's grave

Henryk Sokolak , actually Henryk Mikołajczak (born December 16, 1916 , Tarnopol district , then Austria-Hungary , according to other information * December 16, 1921 , Goraj, Powiat Czarnkowski , Poland ; † December 9, 1984 in Warsaw ) was a Polish communist resistance fighter against National Socialism , prisoner and member of the Polish resistance group in Buchenwald concentration camp , and worked after 1945 for the Polish ministerial office Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego and as an ambassador to Tunisia .

Name, place of birth, date of birth

Sokolak was born as Henryk Mikołajczak. Occasionally Mikołajczyk is also mentioned as a surname, but both Aleksander Kochański's and Harry Stein's short biography give the name Mikołajczak. According to Kochański, the Polska Partia Robotnicza (Polish Workers' Party) advised him to change his name back in 1945, but the change of name to Sokolak did not officially take place until 1959.

According to Aleksander Kochański, Sokolak was born in 1916 near Tarnopol, now Ternopil . Kochański calls Zgrobelice in the Tarnopol district , but the place cannot be clearly identified. Possibly Zagrobela is meant, Ukrainian: Sahrebellja, today a district of Ternopil under the name Druzhba. Tarnopol in Eastern Galicia belonged to Austria-Hungary until 1919, but was occupied by Russian troops from 1915 to 1917. In other publications, the year of birth is usually given as 1921 and the place of birth Goraj in Poland. 1921 can also be seen as the year of his birth on his tombstone in the Powązki military cemetery . According to Kochański, this place is Goraj in the powiat Czarnkowski ( Gmina Czarnków ). According to Kochański, the naming of this place of birth and the year of birth 1921 goes back to later biographical information from Sokolak himself.

The change of name and dates of life is probably due to Sokolak's activities in the prisoner infirmary in Buchenwald, which would not have been possible without cooperation with the SS. There was a risk that investigative proceedings would be initiated against Sokolak because of this cooperation and, in this context, possibly also because of involvement in killings in the camp, as was the case with other prison functionaries . Similar to Helmut Thiemann ( Rolf Markert ), the party recommended that he change his name.

Life

Mikołajczak was the son of the farm worker and later railroad worker Wincenty Mikołajczak and his wife Agnieszka, née Jarke. He attended school in Rogoźno and Międzychód and completed training at the teachers' college in Rogoźno. After military service and visiting a cadet institute in Poznan , he began to work as a teacher in the village of Rudna in the powiat Międzychodzki in 1938 . There he also became a member of the Związek Nauczycielstwa Polskiego teachers' union . As part of the mobilization immediately before the German invasion of Poland , Mikołajczak was drafted into the Polish military and fought in the Battle of the Bzura in September . He became a German prisoner of war . After fleeing temporarily, he was picked up again and taken to Fort VII in Poznan . On October 15, 1939, the Germans deported him to the Buchenwald concentration camp .

Mikołajczak remained a political prisoner in Buchenwald with prisoner number 1012 until the liberation. There he taught Polish young people in the so-called “Polish School”, a provisional facility that the political prisoners had organized and which the SS temporarily tolerated. There he taught German and mathematics in German. The use of Polish and the teaching of Polish were forbidden, but still practiced. Later he worked as a nurse in the prisoner infirmary, a center of resistance in Buchenwald . He made contact with the illegal International Camp Committee and was temporarily its member for the Polish prisoners. He was also involved in founding the illegal camp organization of the Polska Partia Robotnicza (PPR). He became the commander of the illegal Gwardia Ludowa raiding party in the camp.

When the Nazi regime was eliminated, Sokolak returned to Poland and was actively involved in the remembrance work of the liberated prisoners. In 1957 he gave a report The Poles in the illegal resistance . Another report dealt with "Name exchange with the dead".

Professionally, he now worked for the newly founded Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego . He started there as a senior adviser in Section I in the V area of ​​the Voivodeship Public Security Office in Poznań . Since July 25, 1949 he was a lecturer at the School for Political Education at the VII Department of the Ministry of Public Security (MfÖS). From September 1, 1950 he was in command of the officers' school in the VII Department of the MfÖS, later from May 1, 1952, he was head of the IV Department in the VII Department of the MfÖS. After leaving the chief post in the IV. Area of ​​the VII. Department on June 15, 1953, he was at the service of Colonel Stefan Antosiewicz , the director of the I. Department in the MfÖS. After the structures of the MfÖS were dissolved, he switched to the Committee for Public Security Affairs. When these structures were subsequently liquidated and their tasks were taken over by the Ministry of the Interior in 1956 , he moved to this Ministry on November 28 of this year and took over the position of Deputy Director of Colonel Witold Sienkiewicz in Department I of the MdI. When Sienkiewicz left this post on July 31, 1961, it was temporarily replaced by Henryk Sokolak. His official appointment as Director of Department I at the MdI took place on August 6, 1961, where he held office until January 15, 1969. When this office later passed to General Mirosław Milewski , he was available to the director of the Cadre Department at the MdI.

On November 1, 1974, he was released from the Ministry of the Interior. In 1977 or 1978 Solak was appointed ambassador to the newly established diplomatic mission in Tunisia. He stayed there until his retirement .

memories

In the Federal Archives in the SAPMO area under the signature SgY 30/0840 memories of Sokolak are recorded, which concern the political work of the International Camp Committee and the German and Polish Communists in the Buchenwald concentration camp 1939–1945.

literature

  • Emil Carlebach / Willy Schmidt / Ulrich Schneider (eds.): Buchenwald a concentration camp. Reports - Pictures - Documents , Bonn 2000, ISBN 3-89144-271-8 .
  • Author collective: Buchenwald. Reminder and obligation. Documents and reports , Berlin 1983, p. 755
  • Harry Stein, Buchenwald Memorial (ed.): Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937–1945 . Accompanying volume for the permanent historical exhibition, Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 978-3-89244-222-6 .

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Harry Stein: Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937–1945. Accompanying volume for the permanent historical exhibition . Wallstein, Göttingen 1999, p. 304.
  2. ↑ Aleksander Kochański: Henryk Sokolak .
  3. ↑ So with Harry Stein: Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937–1945. Accompanying volume for the permanent historical exhibition . Wallstein, Göttingen 1999, p. 304.
  4. ↑ Aleksander Kochański: Henryk Sokolak .
  5. ↑ Aleksander Kochański: Henryk Sokolak ; Philipp Neumann-Thein: The “International Committee Dora-Buchenwald and Commands” (IKBD). On the history of a political active memory. In: Janine Doerry, Thomas Kubetzky, Katja Seybold (eds.): The social memory and the communities of survivors. Wallstein, Göttingen 2014, pp. 139–158, here: p. 146 (footnote 16).
  6. ↑ The article follows Kochański's detailed account, which is based on the year of birth 1916.
  7. ↑ Harry Stein, Buchenwald Memorial (ed.): Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937–1945 , volume accompanying the permanent historical exhibition, Göttingen 1999, p. 304
  8. ↑ Harry Stein, Buchenwald Memorial (ed.) :: Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937–1945 , volume accompanying the permanent historical exhibition, Göttingen 1999, p. 132; Aleksander Kochański: Henryk Sokolak .
  9. ↑ Aleksander Kochański: Henryk Sokolak .
  10. ↑ Author collective: Buchenwald. Reminder and obligation. Documents and reports , Berlin 1983, p. 199
  11. ↑ Author collective: Buchenwald. Reminder and obligation. Documents and reports , Berlin 1983, p. 459
personal data
SURNAME Sokolak, Henryk
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mikołajczak, Henryk (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish resistance fighter and colonel of the Polish MfÖS
DATE OF BIRTH December 16, 1916 or December 16, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Tarnopol District , Austria-Hungary , or Goraj, Czarnków (rural municipality) , Poland
DATE OF DEATH December 9, 1984
Place of death Warsaw