Tomasz Stankiewicz

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Tomasz Stankiewicz Road cycling
Tomasz Stankiewicz (1923)
Tomasz Stankiewicz (1923)
To person
Full name Tomasz Wacław Stankiewicz
Date of birth December 28, 1902
date of death June 21, 1940
nation PolandPoland Poland
discipline Railway (short term / endurance) / road
End of career 1925
Societies)
Warszawskie Towarzystwo Cyklistów
Most important successes
Olympic games
1924 Silver medal - team pursuit
Last updated: October 15, 2018

Tomasz Wacław Stankiewicz (born December 28, 1902 in Warsaw , Russian Empire , † June 21, 1940 in Palmiry ) was a Polish cyclist . At the Olympic Games in Paris in 1924 he won the first Olympic medal for Poles in cycling with the Polish track four in the team pursuit . In 1940 he was murdered during the German occupation of Poland as part of the " AB-Aktion ".

Athletic career

Grave of Tomasz Stankiewicz at the memorial in Palmiry

Tomasz Stankiewicz attended a business school. He was tall and athletically built and began at the age of 19 years in 1921 to de-training on the velodrome of Dynasy, a district of Warsaw. His then teammate from the Warszawskie Towarzystwo Cyklistów club , Franciszek Szymczyk , later recalled that Stankiewicz owned a first-class bike with English components that had made other athletes envious. Stankiewicz was considered ambitious, but also sociable: For example, he celebrated at the club's parties until the early hours of the morning without drinking alcohol, according to Szymczyk.

In 1923 Stankiewicz became the Polish sprint champion on the track , and Szymczyk was one of the defeated competitors. In the same year he took part in the World Railroad Championships in Zurich with Szymczyk, Wiktor Höchsmann , Wiktor Ryl (Iko) and Józef Lange . In 1924 he started at the Olympic Games in Paris and together with Lange, Jan Łazarski and Szymczyk won the silver medal in the team pursuit after the Polish four-man lost to the favored Italian team by eight seconds in the final. This was the first Olympic medal in cycling for Poland. In 1925 Tomasz Stankiewicz ended his sporting career.

Death in Palmiry

After retiring from cycling, Stankiewicz became head of Chrysler's sales department in Warsaw. During the first days of the Wehrmacht occupation in 1939, he was arrested by chance on the street and illegal newspapers were found on him. He is said to have been active in the resistance movement Związek Walki Zbrojnej (ZWZ). He was detained in Pawiak Prison. In 1940 Stankiewicz was one of the 378 people who were killed by the German occupiers on June 20 and 21 near the village of Palmiry (approx. 30 kilometers northwest of Warsaw) in mass shootings as part of the so-called "AB-Aktion", mainly politicians, Scientists, journalists and artists as well as other prominent athletes such as the athletics - Olympic champion over 10,000 m Janusz Kusociński and the chess master Dawid Przepiórka . A total of around 2000 Poles were murdered on this site between 1939 and 1941, most of them inmates from Warsaw prisons who were imprisoned for political reasons and who were considered members of the Polish intelligentsia. The shootings - known as the Palmiry massacre - were carried out by members of the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz , the SD and the Security Police . The entire action was carried out on the instructions of Reinhard Heydrich , the head of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), and Governor General Hans Frank . The organizer on site was SS-Standartenführer Josef Meisinger . He was executed in Warsaw on March 7, 1947 for his war crimes; Frank had already been sentenced to death and hanged the year before in the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals before the International Military Tribunal .

In 1948 the memorial in Palmiry was opened. In the course of the exhumation of the bodies, Tomasz Stankiewicz was given a grave there.

successes

1923

  • PolandPoland Polish champion - sprint

1924

Web links

Commons : Tomasz Stankiewicz  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Tomasz Stankiewicz - pierwszy polski olimpijczyk. In: instytutpileckiego.pl. Retrieved October 16, 2018 (Polish).
  2. ↑ Paweł Tomczyk: 120 lat temu urodził się Józef Lange, kolarz, pierwszy polski medalista olimpijski. In: dzieje.pl. Retrieved October 17, 2018 (Polish).
  3. ↑ a b Notatka z ¿ycia: Olimpijczyk, który zgin ± ³ w Palmirach. In: sportowahistoria.pl. Retrieved October 15, 2018 (Polish).
  4. ↑ a b AD: 77. rocznica największej egzekucji Polaków w Palmirach! Rozstrzelano wówczas 378 osób. In: polskaniepodlegla.pl. June 21, 2017, accessed October 15, 2018 (Polish).
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Benz / Hermann Graml / Hermann Weiß (eds.): Encyclopedia of National Socialism . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-608-91805-1 , p. 524 .
  6. ↑ Michael Wildt: Generation of the Unconditional. Hamburger Edition HIS, 2013, ISBN 978-3-86854-580-7 ( limited preview in Google book search).


personal data
SURNAME Stankiewicz, Tomasz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stankiewicz, Tomasz Wacław
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish cyclist
DATE OF BIRTH December 28, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Warsaw
DATE OF DEATH June 21, 1940
Place of death Palmiry