Leonard Skierski

Leonard Skierski (1926)

Leonard Skierski (left) with the French General Paul Henrys and the Polish Marshal Józef Piłsudski (1920)

Leonard Kazimierz Skierski (born April 26, 1866 in Stopnica , † April 1940 in Charkiw ) was a major general in the Imperial and Polish armies . He was murdered by members of the NKVD during the series of mass murders known as the Katyn Massacre in what is now Ukraine .

Life

Skierski's family came from the Polish aristocracy and were of the Calvinist faith. His younger brother Stefan Skierski (1873-1948) was bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Poland.

After graduating from high school in Kielce , Skierski graduated from the St. Petersburg Military Academy in 1887 . During World War I he was a colonel in the artillery of the Imperial Army . During the February Revolution of 1917 he was imprisoned by the Bolsheviks . After a successful escape he joined General Eugeniusz de Henning-Michaelis and fought on the side of the White Movement until 1918 .

After Polish independence was regained, he became an officer in the Polish army in 1919 . In the Polish-Soviet War in 1920 he was one of the leading figures in the defensive battles against the Red Army and joined Marshal Józef Piłsudski during the May coup in 1926 .

After retiring , Skierski was elected chairman of the synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in 1936. For his military service he received the orders Virtuti Militari and Polonia Restituta, among others . Skierski was also a member of the Legion of Honor .

assassination

From September 17, 1939, Skierski visited General Stanisław Dowoyno-Sołłohub, a friend of his, at his country estate near Kobryń, together with his wife and a friend . On September 20, 1939, members of the NKVD visited the company and shot Dowoyno-Sołłohub in front of those present. They then took Skierski with them, who was initially imprisoned near Luhansk and finally shot in the head in Kharkiv in April 1940 . His body was buried in Pyatychatky .