REMEMBERING AUGUST EMIL FIELDORF ON THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS DEATH.

 Remembering August Emil Fieldorf on the 70th anniversary of his death.

Arrested by the communists in 1950, he didn’t break and refused to cooperate. They staged an 8-hour trial, and their court brought a death sentence. It was a soldier’s privilege to be executed by a firing squad, but Gen. August Emil Fieldorf was denied even that. He was hanged on this date in 1953.

70 years ago today, the Mokotów Prison in Warsaw saw a disgraceful scene. Gen. Fieldorf, a Polish WW2 hero was hanged like a common felon. The communists had tried him as a "fascist-Hitlerite" war criminal, just like the ones he’d fought against.

This outstanding soldier and one of the most important Home Army leaders, commanding its Kedyw [Directorate of Diversion] operations, ordered, orchestrated and oversaw 1,175 acts of sabotage, destruction of 1,167 fuel tankers, 270 military stores, 38 bridges and 4,300 vehicles – as well as liquidation of 2,000 German police personnel and their collaborators.

Fieldorf, using the alias "Nil" [Nile] to remind him of the Egyptian leg of his return from England in the summer of 1940, became one of the most wanted men in occupied Poland during WWII.

 Shortly before the fall of the Warsaw Uprising, he was promoted to the rank of general. In post-war communist Poland Fieldorf got accidentally arrested under a false name and deported to a labour camp in the USSR. Having come out after his return, he was put on trial on false charges and sentenced to death.

He was the highest-ranking Home Army soldier who fell victim to a murder by court in the Stalinist period. Five years later, the Prosecutor General’s Office discontinued the Fieldorf’s case due to lack of evidence. 

It was only in 1989, 36 years after his death, that he was fully rehabilitated by the Prosecutor General of the People's Republic of Poland, which decided that he had not committed the alleged crime. His symbolic grave is located at the Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw.

In 2021 the IPN commemorated General Fieldorf by financing a plaque which was installed in the former detention center at 37 Rakowiecka Street in Warsaw, which now houses the Museum of Cursed Soldiers and Political Prisoners of the People's Republic of Poland.

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