Stanisław Karolkiewicz

Who was Stanisław Karolkiewicz?

Stanisław Karolkiewicz was born in 1918 in the Polish historical region of Podlasie. Raised in a patriotic family, he joined the Polish Army in the 1930s, and then fought in the Polish September Campaign, in the area of Upper Silesia. On September 17, 1939, when the Red Army, allied with the Wehrmacht, attacked eastern Poland, Karolkiewicz was around Nisko.

Caught by the Germans, he escaped and returned to his homeland in the Białystok countryside, which had been incorporated to the Soviet Union. He immediately began organizing anti-Soviet resistance movement, taking advantage of the landscape of the province, full of forests and swamps. His unit stayed around Augustów, between the Biebrza river and the Augustów Canal.

In February 1940, the NKVD launched an offensive against anti-Soviet Polish guerillas, and Karolkiewicz was caught. The Soviets put him in prisons in Białystok and later in Brześć nad Bugiem. He was charged of counterrevolutionary activities, but, unlike other prisoners, he was not shot. Kept in the prison in Brzesc, he was released in June 1941, when the Wehrmacht seized the city.