Stanisław Swianiewicz
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Stanisław Swianiewicz | |
|---|---|
Dvinsk, Russian Empire | |
| Died | 22 May 1997 (aged 97) Chislehurst, United Kingdom |
| Resting place | Lower Sackville Cemetery, Halifax, Canada |
| Nationality | Polish |
| Occupation(s) | Professor at Saint Mary's University, Halifax |
| Known for | Eyewitness testament of the Katyn massacre |
Stanisław Swianiewicz (7 November 1899 – 22 May 1997) was a Polish economist and historian. A veteran of the
Polish-Soviet War, he was during World War II a survivor of the Katyn massacre[1] and an eyewitness of the transport of Polish prisoners-of-war to the forests outside Smolensk by the NKVD
.
Biography
Stanisław Swianiewicz was born on 7 November 1899 in
Polish-Soviet War, he crossed the front lines and reached Vilna (now Vilnius), where he took part in the defense of the city against the Bolsheviks. He also took part in the seizure of Vilnius by the forces of Genetal Lucjan Żeligowski
.
Demobilized, he attended the
socialist economies. He was also a journalist on various newspapers, including the Kurier Wileński
.
On 2 August 1939, he was mobilized in the
Katyn Massacre in the spring of 1940, he was attached to a group of about 100 Polish officers being moved by train to a small station in Gniezdovo, near Katyn.[1] There, all of his comrades were massed in buses with blindfolded windows and transported to the mass murder site, but Swianiewicz himself was withdrawn from the transport.[1]
He was then transferred to the prison in
Polish Army, which was being formed by General Władysław Anders in the south of Soviet Union. He was one of the first witnesses to inform the Polish authorities of the number of Polish prisoners-of-war held in Soviet camps until the spring of 1940. He remained in the Polish embassy in Moscow as one of the officials entrusted with searching for the roughly 22,000 missing Polish officers. He left Russia in July 1942 and reached the United Kingdom, where he remained active in the Polish government-in-exile
. He was also co-author of The crime of Katyn; Facts & Documents; one of the first monographs on the mass murder of Polish officers by the Soviets, it was published in 1948.
After the war, he had to remain in exile in
Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia
.
In 1956, 18 years after their last meeting, his wife, Olimpia, was allowed to leave Poland and joined him in London. In the 1970s, he also became an active member of various organizations documenting and fighting against
Soviet bloc
countries.
He never returned to Poland and spent his last years in an Antokol hotel in Chislehurst, Kent, near London, that was run by General Tadeusz Pełczyński and his wife. He died there on 22 May 1997 and was buried in Halifax, next to his wife.
They had four children.
University of Warmia and Mazury, in Olsztyn
. Witold also translated W cieniu katynia into English and published it under the title In the Shadow of Katyn: Stalin's Terror in 2002.
Bibliography
- Stanisław Swianiewicz (1983) [1930]. Lenin jako ekonomista. Poznań, Głosy. p. 15.
- Stanisław Swianiewicz (1938). Polityka gospodarcza Niemiec hitlerowskich. Warsaw, Polityka. p. 278.
- The crime of Katyn; facts & documents. Zdzisław Stahl, Władysław Anders, Stanisław Swianiewicz, Józef Mackiewicz. London, Gryf. 1948. p. 303.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) - Stanisław Swianiewicz (1965). Forced Labour and Economic Development; An Enquiry into the Experience of Soviet Industrialization. Oxford, ISBN 0-313-24983-0.
- Stanisław Swianiewicz (1976). W cieniu Katynia. Paris, ISBN 2-7168-0027-8.
- Stanisław Swianiewicz (1996). Dzieciństwo i młodość. Warsaw, Jan Jacek Swianiewicz. p. 107. ISBN 83-86367-26-1.
- Benon Gaziński, ed., Stanisław Swianiewicz (1899-1997): ekonomista, sowietolog, historyk. Olsztyn: Instytut Nauk Uniwersytet Warmińsko-Mazurski w Olsztynie, 2010. 179 pp. Includes chapters written by his four children and family photographs; available Saint Mary's University Library, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
- File-folder Stanislaw Swianiewicz. University Archive, Saint Mary's University Patrick Power Library, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
References
- ^ CIA. Archived from the originalon June 13, 2007. Retrieved 28 January 2013.
Further reading
- Vladimir Abarinov, The Murderers of Katyn: a Russian Journalist Investigates the 1940 Massacre of 15,000 Polish Officers in Soviet Captivity. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1993, 396 pp.
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