Piotr Śmietański

Piotr Śmietański (27 June 1899 – 23 February 1950) was a Polish non-commissioned officer and communist functionary in the Ministry of Public Security and executioner at Mokotów Prison.

Biography

Śmietański was born in Zawady to an ethnic Polish working-class family. including victims of the notorious 1 March, 1951 Mokotów Prison execution, who were given five consecutive death sentences each. As a humiliation, Brigadier General August Emil Fieldorf was hanged rather than shot.

The head of the Mokotów Prison, Alojzy Grabicki, was sometimes present at the executions.

On 25 May 1948, Śmietański personally executed Witold Pilecki, the founder of the Secret Polish Army and prominent member of the Armia Krajowa, famous for his daring mission to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Śmietański is believed to have been paid 1,000 Polish złoty for each execution he carried out, a substantial amount of money under Stalinism.

According to historians Szymon Hermański and Tomasz Wróblewski, some pieces in Nasz Dziennik and Najwyższy Czas! falsely claimed he had emigrated to Israel in 1968, that he was born in the 1920s, was purposefully not listed in the population registry, and was possibly still alive in Israel. However he died from tuberculosis in the Korczak sanatorium on 23 February 1950 and was buried in Bródno Cemetery four days later.

Historian Jacek Pawłowicz from IPN in his 2008 book about Pilecki claimed that Śmietański died of tuberculosis at the age of 50 in the year of his last known Mokotów executions. Śmietański is buried in section 8H, row 1, grave 4 at the Bródno Cemetery in Warsaw, together with his wife Eufemia (1899–1976) and daughter Zdzislawa Szablewska (1933–1996).

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