Jan Baczewski

Jan Baczewski , Johann Baczewski (born December 13, 1890 in Grieslienen in the Allenstein district , † June 20, 1958 in Gdańsk ) was a German-Polish functionary of the Union of Poles in Germany and a Prussian member of parliament.

Life

Jan Baczewski came from a large family of Polish Catholics from Warmia . He attended the Hosianum high school in Braunsberg and then an agricultural school in Allenstein . In 1920 he was one of the founders of the Union of Poles in East Prussia and the sponsoring association for a Polish school in Allenstein; later he became chairman of the Association of Polish School Associations in Germany. On his initiative, the only Polish grammar school in Germany was founded in Beuthen (Upper Silesia) , which was later also attended by his sons when they were expelled from a Berlin grammar school during the Nazi era because they belonged to the Polish minority.

In 1922 he founded the Union of Poles in Germany as an association of the previously existing regional Polish associations. As a representative of the Polish-speaking minority in Germany, he was elected to the Prussian state parliament from 1922 to 1928 . In 1924 he was a co-founder of the Association of National Minorities in Germany .

On September 1, 1939, he was arrested along with thousands of other representatives of the Polish minority in Germany; After tortures in his place of residence, Rangsdorf near Berlin, he was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , from which he was released a year later, seriously ill. His house in Rangsdorf was expropriated by the Nazis when he was brought to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After the release from the concentration camp, the entire family was forbidden to go to Rangsdorf.

After Neudamm in Brandenburg was conquered by the Soviet Army in 1945, he was appointed mayor of the city now known as Dębno and was a member of the constituent Sejm for the Polish Peasant Party from 1947 to 1952.

The former home of the Baczewski family fell victim to nightly arson in 2010, although it was a listed building.

Since 2011, a plaque in front of the former house in Kurparkallee has been commemorating the fate of Jan Baczewski.

On August 28, 2015, the newly elected Polish President Andrzej Duda and his wife Agata Kornhauser-Duda visited the former residence of Rangsdorf as part of their inaugural visit to Germany in order to adequately honor Jan Baczewski's lifetime achievement.

Web links

• A necessary conversation, exactly 71 years after Jan Baczewski's arrest. In: Märkische Allgemeine . dated September 2, 2010.