Witold Kieżun caught on documentary footage during Warsaw uprising, 23 August 1944, carrying a seized HMG after a successful assault – Wikimedia
One of the legends of the Warsaw Uprising passed away today in Warsaw. Prof. Witold Kieżun died today at the age of 99.
He served in the Home Army Headquarters, the Baszta Regiment, the “Karpaty” battalion, the “K-4” company (communications), and from 1944 in the NOW-AK “Gustaw” battalion.
From August 1944, he fought in the Warsaw Uprising as a corporal cadet under the pseudonym “Excursion”. He served in the special tasks unit “Harnaś” in the “Gustaw” battalion and participated in several important actions and several acts of heroism.
In August 1944, he was awarded the Cross of Valor and on September 23, 1944, the commander of the Home Army, General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, awarded him with the Virtuti Militari Cross.
Taken prisoner by the nazis, he managed to escape transport conducting him to a camp of prisoners and went to Kraków but in March 1945, he was arrested by the NKVD and sent to a labor camp through Siberia to a desert in Turkmenistan where he got pneumonia, typhus, with partial paralysis of his legs and other illness. He was returned to Poland in 1946.
After this life, like in a movie, he graduated from the Jagiellonian University, he was an assistant at the Central School of Planning and Statistics, After a PhD in economics in 1964, he became an economist professor eleven years later. He wrote a dozen of books and hundreds of articles. He was also an honorary member of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
He was honored and distinguished many times.
To know more about Witold Kieżun incredible life, read the Wikipedia article here, his personal homage (in Polish) here or his Facebook page here.
Adrian Grycuk -Wikimedia
Witold Kieżun and Pope John Paul II in Burundi 1991 – Witold Kieżun family archives – Wikimedia
Prof. Witold Kieżun working in a bank in the TV news in the 1960s from (00:33).
Beautiful Warszawa 