Stanisław Tatar

Stanisław Tatar nom de guerre "Stanisław Tabor" (3 October 1896 – 16 December 1980) was a Polish Army colonel in the interwar period and, during World War II, one of the commanders of Armia Krajowa, Polish resistance movement. He was appointed brigade general in 1943 and half-a-year later flew from occupied Poland to London.

After the war ended, Tatar betrayed the London-based Polish government-in-exile by organising an illegal handover of its vast reserves of money and gold (donated by the nation and called the Fund of National Defense), to the communist regime. Most of it however, was subsequently stolen and split among the Stalinist dignitaries and security forces under Jakub Berman, without leaving a paper trail. Unlike some of his fellow generals of the Polish Army, Stanisław Tatar was not deprived of Polish citizenship by the Soviet-backed communist authorities of Poland and in 1949 was allowed to legally return to his homeland.

Upon his arrival to Warsaw, however, he was arrested by the Soviet NKVD, imprisoned and charged with espionage. As a victim of the Trial of the Generals (show trial) of 1951 he was sentenced to life imprisonment and imprisoned in Wronki Prison. After Joseph Stalin's death and the start of a period of liberalisation in Poland in 1956 he was released from prison and rehabilitated. Tatar died in 1980.

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