The final year of General “Grot” Rowecki’s life

After having been betrayed to the Gestapo by Poles and murdered by the Germans, General “Grot” was “killed” a second time during the trial of his betrayers.

In the grounds for the judgement of 1953, in which Blanka Kaczorowska was sentenced to life imprisonment, the court in communist Poland stated that: “In the view of the Voivodeship court, the defendant is a victim of criminal activities by the leadership of the Home Army, which (...) collaborated with the Gestapo, acted in service to the Gestapo, and worked at its side against the majority of the population of the Polish nation in their fight led by the Polish Worker’s Party for national and societal liberation.”[12]

Kaczorowska and Kalkstein were subsequently released from prison prematurely: she after five-and-a-half years; he after less than twelve years.[12]

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In the special exhibition General Stefan “Grot” Rowecki – “Special Prisoner” in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp 1943–1944, which was opened on 4 November 2014, the most important stages in the life of the head of the Home Army are presented, together with his military and political activities. Out of necessity, only fragments of his story can be told.

The expansion and consolidation of the Polish underground resistance, the constantly changing strategies it deployed in its fight against Soviet Russia and Germany in a “war on two fronts” – furthermore within the context of the rapidly developing events on the eastern front – are complex and sensitive issues. Certainly, the events of August 1944 and the years that followed surpassed even “Grot’s” wildest and darkest prophecies, particularly those associated with the manner in which the battle for liberation was conducted, including the national uprising in Poland towards the end of the war.

Dr Tomasz Szarota and Tadeusz Żenczykowski have written extensively on this subject.

Wojciech Drozdek, August 2020

Our thanks to the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum for supporting this project and for their permission to publish the photographs. Our particular thanks to Dr Horst Seferens (press and public relations) for the additional information and for the opportunity to visit the “Zellenbau”, which was closed to the public during the pandemic.

For more information about the Sachsenhausen Museum and its different sections, including the “Zellenbau”, see: https://www.sachsenhausen-sbg.de/en/

Bibliography:

Stefan Rowecki (Grot): Wspomnienia i notatki. Czerwiec-wrzesień 1939, Czytelnik, Warsaw 1957.

Irena Rowecka-Mielczarska: Ojciec. Wspomnienia córki gen. Stefana Grota-Roweckiego, Czytelnik, Warsaw 1985.

Tomasz Szarota: Stefan Rowecki „Grot“, PWN, Warsaw 1983.

Tadeusz Żenczykowski: Generał Grot. U kresu walki, Polonia, London 1983.