The Warsaw insurgent Stanisław Kral-Leszczyński “Stanisław” has died. He was 100 years old

Stanisław Kral-Leszczyński ps. died at the age of 100. “Stach”, a hero of the Warsaw Uprising – the Nie Forget About Us, Warsaw Insurgents Foundation announced on Monday evening. “Stanisław” fought in the Mokotów Uprising, in the ranks of the “Baszta” Regiment.

“It was a great honor for us to be friends with Mr. Stanisław and support him on a daily basis as part of the Foundation’s care projects,” the foundation emphasized in an entry on the X platform. It was also recalled that Leszczyński was injured during the fighting. “I was injured in my hand by an artillery shell. The doctor comes to me, he was actually a third-year student, as I later found out, he looked at it and said: ‘Let’s cut it off, we need to cut it off’. I say: ‘I don’t agree.’ then you will die.’ So I said: ‘Then I will die’. Because I’m thinking: ‘Well, living without a hand makes no sense+’ The priest came, made a formal confession, gave viaticum for the journey, a wafer as communion. But I didn’t die, I survived wounded until the capitulation of Mokotów,” he recalled in the quoted statement for the Oral History Archive.

Stanisław Kral-Leszczyński was born in Tarnopol on January 7, 1923. He spent his childhood in Białystok. In September 1939, his father was a doctor at a military hospital in Białystok. The facility was evacuated to Rivne in the Borderlands. “Stanisław” volunteered and left with his father. The Soviet invasion found them in Rivne. Together they escaped captivity and returned to Białystok, where his father was arrested.

In 1942, he joined the Union of Armed Struggle. Two years later, at risk of arrest by the Germans, he left for Warsaw. The outbreak of the uprising found him in Mokotów. On the first day he was injured in the leg. He returned to “Baszta” in September. He fought near Naruszewicza Street. Then he was seriously injured in the hand. At the end of September he was captured by the Germans. He went to the hospital in Skierniewice. He returned to Warsaw in January 1945.

After the war, he studied at the Warsaw School of Economics. He worked in foreign trade and construction companies. He was active in the Home Army veterans’ movement and was friends with many comrades in arms. “The characteristic thing about these friendships is that we are always kind to each other. There is a custom that all insurgents call each other you, which brings us closer together. It is just like at school, everyone is equal, regardless of whether someone is whether he is a professor or just an ordinary employee, we are all close to each other,” he recalled in a statement for the Oral History Archive.

Read also: Born under bombs