Jan Klimek (Nazi victim)

The title of this article is ambiguous. For the Polish economist of the same name, see Jan Klimek .

Jan Klimek (born September 20, 1889 in Morroschin , Dirschau district , † October 5, 1939 in Saspe - Danzig ) was a Polish postal worker and a victim of Nazi military justice .

Life

After the First World War he lived in the Free City of Gdańsk and was employed as an assistant at the Polish Post Office (Poczta Polska w Wolnym Mieście Gdańsku) on Hevelius Square in Gdańsk's Old Town . During the attack on Poland in 1939, the post office building was attacked by the SS Heimwehr Gdansk on September 1st at 4.45 a.m. and a battle broke out over the Polish post office in Gdansk . When the defenders surrendered at 7 p.m., they were arrested and Jan Klimek was taken to the prison on Bischofsberg . On September 8th he was sentenced to death by the court martial under the court chairman Kurt Bode and judge Hans-Werner Giesecke. The execution by shooting was carried out on October 5 by the SS men under the command of Max Pauly on the military grounds in Saspe - the bodies were also buried there.

In memory

He was posthumously awarded the Order of Virtuti Militari by the Polish government in exile and made an honorary citizen of the city of Gdansk. In 1992, the carried reburial at the memorial cemetery in Zaspa .

literature

• Dieter Schenk : The post office of Danzig - history of a German judicial murder . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-498-06288-3 .
• Ryszard Szwoch: Słownik biograficzny Kociewia . Vol. 3, Towarzystwo Miłośników Ziemi Kociewskiej, Starogard Gdański 2008, p. 121.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Danzig - The fight for the Polish post. Germans and Poles, September 1, 1939, accessed July 24, 2014 . 
2. ↑ Axel Kintzinger: It was wrong what happened to our fathers. Berliner Zeitung, January 25, 1997, accessed on July 24, 2014 . 
3. ↑ Lutz Herden: The bells of the Marienkirche. Friday , August 31, 2001, accessed on July 24, 2014 .