Ignacy Kazimierz Ledóchowski

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General Ignacy Kazimierz Ledóchowski

Ignacy Kazimierz Maria Graf Ledóchowski (born August 5, 1871 in Loosdorf , Lower Austria ; † March 6, 1945 in Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp ) was a Polish general. He came from the Polish-Austrian count family Ledóchowski .

Life

The son of Antoni August Ledóchowski in his second marriage to Josefine von Salis-Zizers comes from the old south Polish noble family Ledóchowski . He was the youngest of twelve siblings, including Blessed Maria Teresia Ledóchowska , Saint Ursula Ledóchowska and the Jesuit general Włodzimierz Dionizy Ledóchowski . His great-grandfather was General Ignacy Hilary Ledóchowski .

Ledóchowski grew up in Lower Austria, where the family had been based since 1843. After the death of his first wife, his father left the estate in Sitzenthal and built a villa in Loosdorf. Shortly after Ignacy was born, his father lost large parts of his fortune in the bank crash in 1873 and had to sell the villa. Ignacy grew up in St. Pölten , where the family moved in 1874.

After finishing school, he received military training from 1886 at the Mährisch Weißkirchen army school and from 1889 at the kuk war school in Vienna. After receiving his officer's diploma in the Austro-Hungarian Army , Ledóchowski was posted to Cracow with the rank of lieutenant . On November 24, 1903, he married in Krakowiec , Powiat Jaworów , Paulina Countess Lubieńska. The marriage resulted in four children Jadwiga, Maria Teresia, Jozefa Maria and Włodzimierz Ignacy.

During the First World War Ledóchowski fought as the commander of an Austro-Hungarian regiment in Volhynia and Italy . At the end of the war he was in the rank of colonel and had been awarded the Order of Leopold and the Order of the Iron Crown .

On November 28, 1918 Ledóchowski, who had been friends with Józef Piłsudski since fighting together on the Russian front during the war , joined the new Polish army . When the Polish-Soviet War broke out in 1919 , he was a battalion - and later division commander - significantly involved in the “ miracle on the Vistula ”. After the Riga Peace Treaty of 1921 he became the commander of the Kobryń Army School . From 1923 Ledóchowski, who had been awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor , assumed leading positions at the military district commandos in Kraków and Łódź with the rank of lieutenant general .

When Piłsudski came to power in a coup in 1926 , the old friendship was already broken. Ledóchowski refused to support him and was released on February 1, 1927. Until the outbreak of the Second World War, he managed his wife's estate in Wólka Rosnowska near Lemberg . After the partition of Poland along the Ribbentrop-Molotow Line , the family fled from the Soviet occupiers to their Lipnica Murowana estate, located in the German part. After Ledóchowski had recognized that international martial law was being disregarded here too , he contacted the Armia Krajowa . He supported the underground army in various ways, including the administration of funds and, as Krak, became an advisor in the formation and training of partisan units.

The reserve officer of the Armia Krajowa was arrested by the Gestapo on July 1, 1944 , after they got their hands on a photograph of Ledóchowski's taking of a solemn pledge of the Armia Krajowa near Iwkowa. After he had openly admitted that he belonged to the Armia Krajowa during his interrogations, Ledóchowski was taken to the Groß-Rosen concentration camp in August 1944 . During his imprisonment in the concentration camp, he was used to work in the weaving mill. Because of his honesty and deep Catholic faith, he was referred to as the Holy General among his fellow inmates and guards .

After the evacuation of the Groß-Rosen concentration camp in front of the approaching front, Ledóchowski was one of the prisoners who were transported to the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp in mid-February 1945 . As a result of these several days of relocation, which took place in open and drafty rail freight cars in winter temperatures, Ledóchowski fell ill with pneumonia, the consequences of which inmate 113195, a political Pole, Ledochowski, Ignatz died a little later in the Dora camp.

Austrian military awards (as of December 31, 1918)

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personal data
SURNAME Ledóchowski, Ignacy Kazimierz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ledóchowski, Ignacy Kazimierz Maria Graf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish general
DATE OF BIRTH August 5, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Loosdorf , Lower Austria
DATE OF DEATH March 6, 1945
Place of death Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp