“Piórecki’s father was dismissed from active service following yet another stunt. While heavily intoxicated, he climbed onto a hearse and, with the flair of a cavalryman in a major’s uniform, went galloping through the streets.”
As Jerzy Kirchmayer recalled, Karol Piórecki was frequently seen in various establishments throughout Vilnius, until eventually, all trace of him was lost. His alcoholism also cost him his family. His marriage collapsed: his wife left him, and his sons were far from impressed by their father’s conduct. They are mentioned again by Barbara Narębska-Dębska-Kozłowska:
“Across the street lived Andrzej Piórecki. All the boarding school girls were in love with Andrzej Piórecki, known as ‘Dadek,’ and Leon, known as ‘Lalek.’ They were beautiful boys, and it was impossible not to fall in love with one of them, especially since they paraded around in the navy-blue capes worn by students of the Gimnazjum Jezuitów (Jesuit College). I fell in love with Andrzej when I was fifteen, the same age as the object of my sighs.”
Andrzej Piórecki dreamed of the boundless sea. In 1938, he left for Gdynia and embarked on his first voyage aboard the Dar Pomorza. Then came September 1939, bringing another trial for Karol Piórecki, his sons, and indeed for all Poles. The years of occupation, from 1939 to 1945, were a time of struggle for freedom and, above all, for Poland. Andrzej Piórecki served on the destroyer ORP Błyskawica, eventually reaching London. Leon joined the partisan movement in the Vilnius region, fighting alongside Major “Łupaszka.” Mrs. Piórecka was active in the Home Army, while her former husband, Karol Piórecki, was then living in Ostrów Mazowiecka, where he became involved in an underground scouting organization connected with the local commercial school.
It is known that he actively supported the Polish Scouting movement. Drawing on his years of military and wartime experience, he became a symbol and a role model for the youth—a man who, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, had overcome his alcoholism. The scouts’ activities and the subsequent repression are described by Zygmunt Zonik in his book Wyrwani z szeregów (Torn from the Ranks):
“They did not spare the scouts. Their troop was quickly uncovered, as early as April 1941, and its young members were arrested. The crackdown was likely the result of betrayal, or rather a denunciation, as the Gestapo ‘picked out’ the boys from a prepared list. In practice, these were almost all the students of the commercial school that had been closed by the Nazi authorities. April 8 was tragically etched into the annals of the town of Ostrów. Those captured included Wojciech Białoskórski, Teofil Bryjniak, Jerzy Flantz, Stanisław Gerszberg, Janusz Hrynkiewicz, Jerzy Jędrzejczyk, Czesław Kempisty, Zygmunt Kempisty, Jerzy Mierzwiński, Eugeniusz Morawski, Stanisław Nowacki, Kazimierz Piotrowski, Karol Piórecki, Bohdan Płoński, Kazimierz Radwański, Jerzy Rychter, Stanisław Richter, Jerzy Witkowski—almost exclusively scouts. … All of them endured the horror of interrogations combined with torture in the basements of the local town hall (some sources suggest it was in the local brewery), and on April 12, they were all transported to Pawiak Prison.”
The dark cellars of Pawiak marked the beginning of the most difficult and final trial of Karol Piórecki’s life. On May 29, 1941, twenty men from Ostrów—including Karol Franciszek Piórecki—were deported in
a transport of 304 men to the most terrible place on earth: the Auschwitz concentration camp. Stripped of his clothes and his illusions, humiliated to the very limits of human endurance, Major Karol Piórecki became prisoner number 16660.
Major Karol Franciszek Piórecki passed his final examination of life—the ultimate test of survival. Camp records confirm his treatment and medical examinations, including X-ray images that were taken. Unfortunately, on February 28, 1942, he died under circumstances that remain unknown. He was not buried like the soldiers who fell during the May Coup; instead, his ashes shared the final fate of other prisoners.
Meanwhile, Karol’s son Leon continued his fight for a free Poland. Within his partisan unit, he adopted the nom de guerre “Bój,” actively resisting the occupiers alongside Major Zygmunt Szendzielarz, known as “Łupaszka.” Leon fulfilled his duty to his homeland. Just as his father had done before him, the son now fought for a better tomorrow.
On January 31, 1944, a battle broke out between “Łupaszka’s” unit and a German Wehrmacht detachment. The village of Worziany became the site of this historic clash. The German unit—consisting of 2 officers, 12 NCOs, and 77 riflemen, including 26 NCOs, and equipped with two heavy machine guns and six light machine guns—was under the command of Captain Knöpft. Their mission was to crush the partisans once and for all. However, the battle did not unfold as the Germans had planned. The partisans ambushed the unit, inflicting heavy losses and ultimately dispersing it. There were causalties on both sides. The final phase of the battle was described as follows:
“The Germans realized they had fallen into
a trap. Individually and in small groups, they attempted to escape across a clearing toward the nearby forest. Those who acted quickly enough managed to get away, but the retreat was cut off by partisans from the platoons of ‘Maks,’ ‘Rakoczy,’ and ‘Dornik.’ The final pockets of resistance in the cemetery were broken. During the second phase of the battle, Leon Piórecki ‘Bój,’ the unidentified ‘Burza,’ ‘Chochlik,’ and ‘Czubczyk,’ and Kazimierz Kozakiewicz ‘Słowik’ were killed—the latter while lying in a furrow, attempting to bandage his arm.”
Leon Piórecki is buried alongside the other partisans who fell in that battle at the cemetery in Worziany, now located in Belarus. The cross behind the monument, on its left side, marks Leon Piórecki’s grave.
The fate of Karol’s other son, Andrzej Piórecki, in Great Britain, has not been determined. It remains unknown whether he survived the war.
The year 1944 brought further tragedy. In Vilnius, under the guise of friendship between Red Army soldiers and Polish partisans, Soviet forces maintained full surveillance of the Polish underground. Arrests of Polish underground officers and their soldiers soon followed. Forced conscription into the Red Army was announced, and many Poles chose to desert rather than serve. As reported by Mirosław Maciorowski in his article “Pociąg pod specjalnym nadzorem” (“Train Under Special Supervision”), published in Gazeta Wyborcza, the Soviets executed 157 Poles in the Oszmiana region within a single week. It became necessary to evacuate the remaining partisan units and Polish civilians west of the Bug River, a move that required the large-scale production of false documents for the refugees.
At 8 Ogińska Street in Antakalnis, in the home of Karol’s former wife, Irena Piórecka,
a clandestine printing shop known as the “Forge” was established in the attic. There, documents were forged to defer military conscription and to grant permission to cross the Bug River. Soviet forces searched Irena’s home several times for Home Army (AK) forgers, but without success. The NKVD knew the printing shop existed somewhere in Antakalnis and deployed special units to locate it. This cat-and-mouse game lasted until July 1945, when the “Forge” was moved to Borowa Street. Its evacuation proceeded without incident. According to the same article, the “Forge” was eventually dismantled in August 1945 following a betrayal by one of its members. The final fate of Irena Piórecka—a heroine who devoted herself to helping the Polish population of the Vilnius region survive in those brutal times—remains unknown.
Four members of the Piórecki family, four heroes. Each lived their life in their own way, demonstrating immense patriotism and devotion to Poland.
I have shared with you the story of Major Karol Piórecki and his family—a family in which patriotic values were intertwined with everyday life. The fate of one officer who experienced both the rise and fall of his beloved homeland became inseparably linked with his own personal triumphs and tragedies, until at last his ashes came to rest forever alongside those of so many distinguished Poles at Auschwitz concentration camp.
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