Stanisław Klimecki

Stanisław Klimecki (November 20, 1883 – December 11, 1942) was a Polish lawyer, social activist, and the President of Kraków at the time of the German invasion of Poland in September 1939. He served as president only for a few weeks,

Biography Klimecki was born in Wola Przemykowska near Brzesko, the son of Edmund Klimecki and Rozalia née Wróblewska. He went to school first in Złoczów, then in Wadowice, Bochnia, and graduated from high school in the Podgórze district of Kraków in 1904. He studied law at the University of Vienna, and after his return he earned a doctorate at Jagiellonian University (UJ) in 1913. During World War I, Klimecki fought with the Second Brigade of the Polish Legions. In 1918, he took part in the disarming of Austrian soldiers in Kraków; he left the army in June 1919, with the rank of Reserve Captain. Klimecki was apprehended at his home at 5 pm the same evening. Within days, they were deported in one rail car – 184 persons in all – to Reichsgau Wartheland and soon imprisoned at Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. Klimecki spent over three months there during the winter. 101 professors from Kraków universities who were older than 40 were released from the camp on February 8, 1940. Klimecki was released with them. The German authorities allowed only the operation of elementary schools during the occupation.

After his return to Kraków in February 1940, Stanisław Klimecki worked for two years as a lawyer, and witnessed the German looting of the city. He was again arrested by the Gestapo, for the last time in his life, on the night of November 28–29, 1942. Two weeks later, on December 11, 1942, he was executed and his body thrown into a mass grave along with some 40 Polish hostages in the remote Niepołomice Forest. A street in Podgórze District of Kraków is named after him.

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