- Władysław Filipkowski
Infobox Military Person
name=Władysław Filipkowski
nickname=Cis, Janka
caption=
rank=Generał brygady
date_of_birth=birth date|1892|5|1|mf=y
placeofbirth=Filipów nearSuwałki
date_of_death=death date|1950|4|17|mf=y
placeofdeath=Pieńsk nearZgorzelec
profession=professional officer, lawyer
serviceyears=1914
units=
battles=Lwów Uprising
laterwork=factory clerk
portrayedby=
awards=|Polish Secret State smallWładysław Filipkowski (noms de guerre "Cis" and "Janka"; 1892-1950) was a Polish military commander and a professional officer of the
Polish Army . DuringWorld War II he was the commanding officer of theArmia Krajowa units in the inspectorate ofLwów (modern Lviv) and the commander of theLwów Uprising . For his merits he was promoted to the titular rank ofgenerał brygady .Władysław Jakub Filipkowski was born
May 1 ,1892 in the village of Filipów nearSuwałki , then in theVistulan Country of theRussian Empire . In 1909 he graduated from a local gymnasium in Suwałki and then left for Galicia, the only part of partitioned Poland where teaching inPolish language was permitted. There he started studying at the law faculty of theLwów University . Simultaneously he also studied at the machine engineering faculty of theLwów University of Technology , where he became a member of theZwiązek Strzelecki paramilitary organization. However, he did not finish his studies at the latter university due to the outbreak of the Great War.On
August 1 ,1914 he joined the Polish Legions, where he held a number of posts. He fought in the Carpathians,Bukovina andVolhynia , serving as a commander of a single piece of artillery, of an infantry platoon and as an adjutant of a battalion of heavyhowitzer s. Following theOath Crisis of 1917 he was interned by the Germans. Released from the prisoner camp onNovember 1 ,1918 , he moved toWarsaw , where he joined the newly-bornPolish Army immediately after its creation. Initially a clerk in the Inspectorate of Artillery, onNovember 29 he became an adjutant to the Polish commander-in-chief, General (laterMarshal of Poland )Józef Piłsudski . During the early stage of thePolish-Bolshevik War , in November 1919 he was dispatched to Lwów, where he served as the commander of the local cell of the II Detachment of the Headquarters, that is the intelligence and counter-intelligence service. He held that post until the signing of thepeace of Riga .During the
May Coup d'Etat in Poland Filipkowski with an infantry regiment under his command supported the revolters of Piłsudski against the government. He remained in the military until the outbreak ofWorld War II . He fought in the Polish Defensive War as a commander of an improvised infantry unit. Captured by the Soviets onOctober 2 ,1939 , he was imprisoned in Lwów. However, he managed to escape from the prison and moved to German-heldGeneral Government . There he hid inOtwock and then inWarsaw , under a variety of false identities. He joined the SZP resistance organization, which was later reformed into the Association of Armed Resistance and in the end into the Home Army. As one of the high-ranking Polish officers who knew the city of Lwów - yet were not known to a wider public prior to the outbreak of World War II, Filipkowski was a perfect candidate for a chief of Polish resistance in that town. In early 1940 he returned there under a false name and started to organize the Polish resistance. Initially under Soviet occupation, he continued his work as a Home Army inspector for the area of the city after the German take-over of the area in 1941. OnAugust 1 ,1943 he was made the commander of all Home Army units in the region.In 1944 the units under his command started the
Operation Tempest in the area. Filipkowski commanded the Polish forces in theLwów Uprising , in which the Home Army, with assistance of the advancingRed Army , took control over the city from the Germans. In the same period his wife, Janina née Obiedzińska and one of his two sons Jan (b. 1922) were active members of the Home Army inMasovia . The latter was killed in the final days of theWarsaw Uprising .Soon after the German forces were pushed out of the city, Filipkowski was invited to a conference with
Michał Rola-Żymierski and arrested by the SovietNKVD inZhytomir onAugust 3 ,1944 ; at the same time most of his soldiers were also arrested and sent to Soviet prisons - or had to flee back to German-held part of Poland. Filipkowski was held in a number of Soviet prisons, including the prison inKiev , aSmersh camp of the1st Ukrainian Front , and NKVD camps inKharkov ,Ryazan ,Dyagilev ,Gryazovets and Brest. In November 1947 he was handed over to the Polish ministry of internal security inBiała Podlaska , interrogated and set free. However, soon afterwards his younger son Andrzej (b. 1925), also a former soldier of the Home Army, was arrested by the Communists and was held in prisons until thedestalinization thaw of 1956.Władysław Filipkowski then settled in Pieńsk near
Zgorzelec , where he found a job of an administrative director of a local state-ownedglass works. He died thereApril 17 ,1950 and was buried in thePowązki cemetery of Warsaw.References
# cite book | author =Grzegorz Mazur | coauthors =Jerzy Julian Węgierski | title =Konspiracja Lwowska 1939-1944. Słownik Biograficzny (Biographic dictionary of Lwów underground) | year =1997 | editor = | pages = | chapter = | chapterurl = | publisher =Unia | location =Katowice | id =ISBN 8386250097 | url = | format = | accessdate =
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.