Stanisław Dąbek

Stanisław Dąbek

Memorial plaque on the site of Stanisław Dąbek's suicide.

Stanisław Dąbek (born March 28, 1892 in Nisko , † September 19, 1939 in Gdynia ) was a colonel in the infantry of the Army of the Republic of Poland .

Life

Stanisław Dąbek grew up in the Subcarpathian region , which was annexed by Austria in 1772 when Poland was partitioned . After finishing high school, he completed a teaching seminar in the Galician Sokal from 1908 . In 1911 he finally began to study law at the University in Lwów , during which he gave tutoring in neighboring Bóbrka .

With the outbreak of World War I , Dąbek was drafted into the infantry of the Austrian army in 1914. During the war he received officer training, after which he was sent to the front as a lieutenant . However , he was badly wounded during a maneuver in the Carpathian Mountains and, after a long break, was deployed to Italy , where he remained until 1918.

After the end of the First World War and the regaining of Polish independence , Dąbek reported to the Polish army , into which he was accepted as a captain after a draft . As such he took part in the Polish-Ukrainian War between 1918 and 1919 and in the Polish-Soviet War from 1919 to 1921 , after which he was promoted to major . In 1924 he finally received the degree of lieutenant colonel and until 1930 headed, among other things, the military school in Podlachian Zambrów . He then commanded several regiments of infantry as a colonel until 1937 .

After Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939, Dąbek was appointed commander of the national land defense brigade on the Polish Baltic coast and controlled the maneuvers of the infantry in the area around the contested military port of Gdynia . After his unit had been separated from the rest of the Polish army and was under heavy fire from the Wehrmacht , he ordered a retreat to the so-called Oxhöfter Kämpe . Since he saw no way out for his soldiers and had to admit his defeat, he finally committed suicide on the evening of September 19, 1939 with a shot in the head.

Appreciation

Dąbek was posthumously awarded the degree of Brigadier General by Lech Wałęsa in 1993 . Both posthumously and during his lifetime he also received several orders, including the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland , the Order Polonia Restituta and the Order Virtuti Militari . He is also the namesake of several schools, a Polish scout team and a rifle regiment. In addition, numerous streets in Poland were named after him. A cargo ship was named as early as 1969, and in 1984 the Polish Post issued a commemorative stamp in his honor, and in 1989 the Polish Mint issued a commemorative coin. The public broadcaster TVP also made a television film about Dąbek in 2009.

Web links

• Lexical entry on Stanisław Dąbek (Polish)
• Detailed CV of Stanisław Dąbek (Polish)