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Błażej Stolarski (1880–1939)

We’re in the park-like grounds of the cemetery in the Berlin district of Marzahn. Following the main avenue, we reach the memorial stone to the victims of fascism on the right. Here, we turn westwards, towards urn area 9 U. At the corner of the first intersecting avenue, on the right-hand side, the rows of war graves begin. There are many more of them elsewhere in the cemetery. However, we are particularly interested in section 3 U, where simple stone panels inform us that this is the final resting place of the victims of the Second World War. We know nothing about them; only their surnames (and, very occasionally, their first names) attest to their country of origin. Most of the people buried here – as far as we can guess – are Slavs: Belarusians, Czechs, Poles and Ukrainians. One stone bears the name “Błażej Stolarski”, and below that, the dates of birth and death. The mandatory dates, 1939–1945, tell us that the person buried here was a victim of the Second World War. Although the panel is significantly newer than the others, it looks exactly like them.

The simple gravesite gives no hint of the life story, successes and defeats of one of the greatest campaigners for farmers’ rights in the Second Polish Republic. Neither do we learn of the tragedy that occurred during the first few months of the war that has still not been fully explained even today. It is a story that until recently was known only to his closest family members and a small group of students and academics. There was also no knowledge of the circumstances of his death in October 1939 and place of burial until the Berlin researcher Klaus Leutner, a close friend to Poland, began to take an interest in Błażej Stolarski, the mayor of Będków.

Public Domain, prepared for publication by Marian Stefanowski.

It remains unclear to this day why Stolarski would have been travelling on the motorway between Berlin and Wrocław. Was he being sent back to Opole after another interrogation, or was he murdered on the journey to Berlin? Since there was no concentration camp for Polish intellectuals near Opole, was he perhaps due to be taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, to the special cells known as the “Zellenbau”?[10] If so, why was he murdered beforehand? Was Stolarski perhaps the victim of a staged attempt to escape, which usually ended with a shot in the back?[11] In this case, however, we are clearly dealing with an outright execution. Was it an “occupational accident” on the part of the Gestapo, or a pre-planned murder? And if it was murder, who gave the orders?

It could be that the district archives in Luckau hold the answers to some of these questions. Possibly, the report on the discovery of the body is stored there that contains the information about Stolarski’s death certificate. The two documents might shed more light on the mystery surrounding Senator Stolarski’s final hours.

We learn from the documents shown below this article that Błażej Stolarski’s body was taken to Berlin, where an autopsy was conducted. The urn containing his ashes was then buried in the Parkfriedhof cemetery in the Berlin district of Marzahn (gravesite U-1).[12]

By no means on the margins...

As the saying goes, a chain is only as strong as its links.

The chain of well-intentioned individuals, who helped uncover more facts about the fate of Błażej Stolarski after he was arrested in Poland, consists of four people: Rima Gutte from the Berlin Senate, who provided a list of Poles buried in the cemetery in Marzahn, which includes Błażej Stolarski’s name, and Cordula Liepack from the district archives in Luckau, who allowed access to the documents containing a large amount of information relating to Stolarski’s mysterious death. Dr. Paweł Perzyna from the Institute of National Remembrance (Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, IPN) in Łódź, author of a biography of B. Stolarski, who compiled the information cited in the article and provided access to it in Poland, and, of course, Klaus Leutner, who clearly appears to be the strongest link in this chain, who has worked for many years to promote reconciliation between Germany and Poland. It is thanks to his tireless efforts that light has now been shed – although still not fully – on another mystery of the war years.

Wojciech Drozdek, February 2019

Postscript by the author: To mark the 80th anniversary of the death of Błażej Stolarski (22/9/2019), a commemorative plaque was unveiled in Będków, the village where he lived. The government officials invited included Antoni Macierewicz [a leading member of the Law and Justice (PiS) party – translator’s note], who is a member of the Sejm in its 9th legislative period. - An irony of history or “Ubu Roi ou les Polonais”?

[10] “Zellenbau” – also known as “bunkers”. “This ‚Tʻ-shaped building was separate from the rest of the camp and was controlled by the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. Of the original building, only the west wing remains [...] One can say that the ‘Zellenbau’ was a special prison in which political prisoners were held, as well as officers of different nationalities [including the leader of the Polish Home Army, General ‘Grot’ Rowecki] and agents of foreign intelligence services who had been uncovered. These prisoners included the chairman of the Communist Party in Germany, Ernst Thälmann and the head of the ‘Confessional Church’ pastor Martin Niemöller; also Georg Elser, who carried out an assassination attempt on Hitler on 8 November 1939, the Ukrainian politician and partisan leader Stefan Bandera together with a group of Ukrainian nationalists, Molotov’s grandson Vasily Kokorin, and Stalin’s son Yakov Dzhugashvili, who later committed suicide here.” In: “Das letzte Jahr von General ‘Grot’ Rowecki”, online: https://www.porta-polonica.de/de/atlas-der-erinnerungsorte/das-letzte-jahr-von-general-grot-rowecki?page=2#body-top

[11] The second son of Błażej Stolarski, who was living in England, was apparently informed by the German Red Cross (via Switzerland) that Senator Stolarski “was shot while trying to escape”, in: Paweł Perzyna, “Błażej Stolarski 1880–1939. Biografia społecznika, działacza gospodarczego i polityka”, Łódź–Warsaw 2017.

[12] Cemetery registry, December 1939: entry no. 336 regarding the burial of the urn on 4/12/1939, giving the place of burial (section 3 U).