Short, stocky, with dictatorial tendencies, even in his cape Stefan Starzyński did not resemble a superhero. And it was not long before he would have been absent from fighting Warsaw. Although he continued to perform his duties as President in the early days of the September Campaign, he was awaiting a frontline assignment.

Like many of his colleagues from Sanacja milieu, Starzyński felt better in uniform than in a suit; during the First World War, he had fought as a soldier of the Polish Legions. So when he received his appointment to the 8th Heavy Artillery Regiment in Toruń, he had a clear plan: to prepare Warsaw for battle (building barricades, turning off the water and gas in the defensive sectors, etc.), hand over the city to his deputy - the continuity of power would be preserved - and then head for the front.

Why did he stay? One could say that he was given a new order - General Kazimierz Sosnkowski, who in September 1939 briefly acted as the coordinator of Warsaw's defence, instructed him "to remain on the spot [...], where he would be needed more than in the regiment". Starzyński heeded the call, and set about defensive preparations in earnest. He was widely known as a titan of labour, so the effects came almost immediately.

One must stand firm

Sosnkowski again: "At around 8.3 p.m., the briefing [with Starzyński's participation - editor's note] was over. [It was already two hours later that the people of Warsaw were working to build barricades, and crowds of civilians were streaming through the streets of the city, heading for the agreed assembly points".

This was overseen by Starzyński - President of the City, and from September 8th onwards Civil Commissioner to the Warsaw Defence Command. In wartime conditions, he proved to be an outstanding host, ensuring relative order and security in the capital. He was the one who set up a substitute for the police, the Citizen's Guard (at its peak, 7000 officers), who forced the opening of bakeries, pharmacies and banks that had been closed at the beginning of September, and who supervised the creation of a network of fire stations, etc.

His greatest fame, however, came with the speeches he made every day on the Polish Radio. Interestingly, before the war, he read almost all of his statements from a sheet of paper, and only came into contact with the microphone a few times at most.

SIGN UP TO OUR PAGE In September 1939, however, that did not matter - every radio appearance by Starzyński meant thousands of sets switched on and thousands of listeners lifted in spirits. How did he win their confidence? Naturalness? Sincerity? Charisma? Probably a bit of all, and he was listened to both when he spoke of the German tank captured by the women of Wola, and of the severe consequences for merchants who did not open their shops. And also when he apologised for his hoarse voice, as the voice is his main working tool....

Wearing a uniform (not a suit, despite the legend perpetuated in the film "Wherever You Are, Mr President", among others) and carrying a briefcase, he spent his days either officiating at Warsaw City Hall or visiting various locations around the capital. His home became his office. He infected everyone with optimism and the belief that Warsaw could defend itself long and effectively. He was so sure of this that he hardly could stand in awe of those calling for capitulation.

Such voices appeared as early as mid-September, and intensified with each passing day. It could not have been otherwise - though Starzyński and his co-workers managed to get the chaos of the first days of war under control, hunger, cold and homelessness were making themselves increasingly felt among the inhabitants of the besieged city.

The president tried to remedy this - for example, on 16 September he instructed the capital's bars and restaurants to save food and serve people only one meal (the so-called eintopf - 'one-pot dish') - but his actions were a drop in the ocean of need.

The situation was not made any better by the fact that the communiqués from the authorities began to lose their matter-of-fact tone and degenerate into a hugely optimistic narrative that had little to do with the reality of war. For example, on 18 September, Lieutenant Colonel Waclaw Lipinski, head of propaganda for the Warsaw Defence Command (DOW), announced on the radio: "The mood of the army is excellent, order is exemplary everywhere. Food and ammunition are in abundance". The press wrote similarly, reporting, among other things, on the battle between British warships and Kriegsmarine units near Gdynia. From today's perspective, these are classic fake news, although they were intended to boost the morale of the army and the public.

Starzyński was more honest in his approach: he made no secret of the fact that Warsaw was being razed to the ground by the Luftwaffe, and that the victims of German air raids included hospitals, hospices and schools. At the same time, however, he argued that it was necessary to persevere, not to surrender, and that the capital was an example to the whole country of standing up to a hostile invasion.

A foretaste of hell

Unfortunately, each successive day increased the likelihood of capitulation. On 23 September - a few hours after Starzyński's most famous speech ("Not in fifty years, not in a hundred years, but today I see great Warsaw...") The Germans hit the Powiśle power station and Warsaw is left without electricity. On 24 September, as a result of damage to the Filtering Station, its workers have to interrupt the water supply. The Luftwaffe turns a number of buildings (including the Warsaw Polytechnic, Krasiñski Palace and the General Inspectorate of the Armed Forces building) into ruins. 25 September is "Black/Black Monday": 400 planes drop some 630 tonnes of bombs on the capital, in addition to artillery fire from more than 1,000 guns.

The final tally of losses was: 12% of buildings destroyed, among civilians 10,000 dead and 50,000 wounded.

Warsaw in the last decade of September is a 'city of shortages': no electricity, no water, no food, no housing, no medicine, etc. The comments of Lieutenant Colonel Tadeusz Tomaszewski, Chief of Staff of the DOW, leave no illusions: "Many horses were lying dead, and hungry, desperate people were cutting out patches of flesh with penknives, knives", "To cross Warsaw on that [September] evening was an art and required [...] crossings to be able to avoid the canyons of fire [...]. The streets were covered with glass all over, cutting the shoes of pedestrians and slashing the tyres of cars".

The Germans explicitly announced that this was a prelude to the hell they would unleash on the city if it did not surrender.

What did Starzyński have to say about that? His supporters would say that he was characterised by steadfastness, his critics by irresponsibility bordering on stupidity. Even though the President of Warsaw was aware of the situation, he was firmly in favour of further resistance. At a meeting of the Warsaw Defence Command and the Civic Committee (bringing together leading Warsaw politicians), held on 26 September, he argued that the city had reserves: 1,300 tonnes of grain would be enough for two months, rice, fats and tinned food could be managed for three more weeks, and water "we will be bringing to the inhabitants in barrel trucks from the Vistula". To arguments that Warsaw would become a graveyard, "like a mighty tur, he bowed his head towards the mourning roses and, with the force of great faith and conviction, retorted: 'Three times so beautiful we will rebuild' "..

One can understand these emotions, but prolonging the defence would only result in more destruction. The only sensible solution was capitulation, for which, apart from Starzyński, practically all the civilians and almost all the military were in favour (the President's position was supported only by Colonel Marian Porwit).

Participants at the Town Hall meeting remembered that Starzyński gave the impression of being absent-minded, indifferent. This was aptly captured by Aleksander Ivánka, Financial Director of the City Board: "It was not just sorrow at the necessity of capitulation that was understandable in a leader of defence, but it was indeed consternation that the fact of capitulation could occur".

"I will remain among my Varsovians".

However, our hero could not afford to remain apathetic for long. As a symbol of Warsaw's resistance, calling the Germans "modern Huns" and the Luftwaffe's air raids "barbaric crimes", he could not count on a lenient treatment. It was not all that clear what character the German occupation would assume, but the fate of opponents of the Third Reich to date suggested that Starzyński would at best face internment, at worst death.

According to witness accounts, he considered three options: suicide, going underground, and staying on as president. The thought of taking his own life was soon abandoned, and of the other two solutions, he initially preferred underground activity. It would seem that Starzyński the conspirator was therefore only a matter of time.

On the evening of 27 September 1939, with false documents and a supply of clothes, he reported to the shelter of the Warsaw Defence Headquarters, ready to be evacuated. However, he heard from General Tadeusz Kutrzeba that he would be needed during the capitulation negotiations with the Germans.

So when General Juliusz Rómmel (commander of the "Warsaw" Army) proposed to him that he should escape by plane to Romania, Stefan Starzyński replied: "Thank you very much for remembering me, but just as you do not want to leave your soldiers, so I will remain among my Varsovians, who are also defenceless and exposed to all sorts of unpleasant consequences".

Starzyński would soon find out that the grace of his compatriots was riding on a thorny horse. Already awaiting him at City Hall were letters criticising and even condemning him, both for his belated surrender of the capital, and for the resistance itself. Not very pleasant reading. But he didn't have much time for that.

He immediately threw himself into his work, and the office again served as his home ('a desk full of documents, a screen and behind it a bed and a washbasin'). He dealt with literally everything: from adhering to the terms of capitulation (he ordered Varsovians to surrender their weapons and ammunition to the police), to taking care of security (more Citizen Service patrols), to solving victualling problems (the opening of "Agril" shops, selling, among other things, rice and sugar - people were queuing for them from 4 a.m., the Citizen Guard handing out hot soup and bread from German field kitchens free of charge, the creation of the Warsaw Provisioning Warehouse).

He supported the Municipal Women's Houses - a network of outlets was organised throughout the city where people could learn how to run a household during the occupation: where to get food, what to cook, what to do with the rubbish, etc. It was his insistence that by mid-October the Germans had allowed 112 of the 189 primary schools to be opened.

Equally important, if not more so, was the rebuilding of damaged houses - a meeting between the President and building entrepreneurs took place on 15 October at the Bristol Hotel. Starzyński patronised the repair of the Royal Castle, seriously damaged by the Luftwaffe. His efforts to set up tramways, a power station or waterworks would fill several more paragraphs.

A tough opponent

The Germans had no doubt that Starzyński would be a tough opponent for them, but they probably did not expect him to be so tough. The President repeatedly intervened with the occupying powers regarding people who had been arrested: priests, teachers, artists, merchants or businessmen. Thanks to his efforts, many of them left the prison, at least for a while.

He also did not hesitate to criticise Wehrmacht troopers - in one conversation with the Reich Commissioner for Warsaw, Dr Helmuth Otto, he accused them of "ransacking flats and taking valuable things under the pretext of looking for weapons". One by one, he enumerated that the Germans were confiscating beds, tables, bedding or typewriters en masse. Otto pledged to counteract, but ended with promises.

Starzyński tried to put the brakes on the anti-Semitic inclinations of Warsaw's new rulers. He protested against Jews being deprived of the right to free meals, distributed on the streets of the capital. He also objected when the Germans threw out the idea of building barracks outside the city and resettling the entire Jewish community there. Symbolic gestures, but beyond them there was little he could officially do, and the occupiers were doing their job - the discriminatory road leading to the Holocaust had begun.

This does not mean, however, that Starzyński merely watched what the Germans were doing. Although he did not get directly involved in the conspiracy, he supported it as much as he could: with money, forged documents and even official cars.

Let's start with documents. In order to produce them, albeit fictitious IDs, the Underground needed original blank forms and municipal stamps. Starzyński instructed the Director of the Population Registration Division, Jan Delingowski, to prepare them, and handed the package containing the "equipment" to Tadeusz Szturm de Sztrem, an activist from the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), on September 28th. In order to avoid suspicion, he did so at the City Hall during the decoration of civilians who had distinguished themselves in the defence of Warsaw. In this way, the first clandestine forgery office was established.

The President of the capital did not intend to stop there. Particularly after a meeting with General Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski "Torwid" (September 29th), who headed the Home Army's predecessor - the Polish Victory Service (SZP). On Starzyński's initiative, "Torwid" and other SZP conspirators were employed in fictitious posts in city institutions. They were all issued with service cards and were relatively secure in the event of a German inspection. And if a German was particularly inquisitive, he would find perfectly good counterfeit citizenship cards in the population records.

A sum of money was donated to the organisation on the President's instructions. What was it? The most commonly mentioned is 350,000 zloty. It was reportedly received by the future Commander-in-Chief of the Home Army (AK), Stefan 'Grot' Rowecki.

Finally, Starzyński handed over a number of city cars to the underground - "the first of these we placed in the courtyard of the National Museum building at 15 Podwale Street" (Stanisław Lorentz, Director of the Museum and, after the capitulation, Starzyński's right hand). He watched over the resistance movement like a guardian angel.

It is hardly surprising, then, that Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski included Starzyński in a peculiar list of the fathers of the Polish underground - a list entitled "The Sixteen of September 1939". If we add to this the tenacity of the politician in his relations with the Occupant, the question arises as to how the Germans were able to tolerate him on the seat of the City President.

The answer is simple: because they needed him. On the one hand, his authority guaranteed that Varsovians would obey German orders during the first period of occupation. On the other, it provided an alibi for the Germans internationally - if the Polish mayor of Warsaw continues to hold his position, then what is the occupation?

„We'll take the son of a bitch”

The true attitude of the Germans to Starzyński was expressed by one of the Gestapo men: "At the moment we need him to get the communal facilities up and running, but then we'll get down to that son of a bitch."

At that time, the Germans were still trying to keep up appearances. Throughout October, therefore, they were looking for anything to arrest the president. When the financial audit of the City Board did not reveal any irregularities, they took up the subsidy for the Warsaw Evangelical-Augsburg Community. They questioned its legality, to which a few sleuths went to the Polish Radio to get records of Starzyński's speeches. Fortunately, the engineer overseeing them, Jan Pilecki, kept his cool and lied that he had given them to Polish officers earlier. Surprisingly, the Germans thus concluded that "Befehl is Befehl" ( in German, "an order is an order") and.... they left.

However, the noose was tightening more and more - on 15 October the president received an 'invitation' from the Gestapo. He went there together with Lorentz and waited for an investigator for three hours. To no avail - in the end, he was told that today's summons was a mistake, but that he would soon be notified of a new date for the interrogation.

Did he expect to be arrested? Probably yes, as he decided to say goodbye to his family. On October 20th or 21st, he visited his sister-in-laws Halina and Maria Starzyńska, gave them all his savings and offered Maria his villa on Szustra Street (her flat having been destroyed by a German bomb, she found temporary shelter with her sister-in-law). He also promised Halina to arrange for new glass for the broken windows, and then left "in a state of great despondency".

The black day came on 27 October. Let us give the floor to Stanislaw Lorentz: "at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, while I was in the President's office, two Gestapo officers suddenly entered, one of a high rank, and asked which of us was President Starzyński of the city, whereupon they instructed him to get dressed and go with him.... President Starzyński went into the washroom next to the Cabinet where he had kept his personal belongings in October, and put on his winter overcoat and took his hat in his hand. When I wanted to take my overcoat from the adjoining office, an officer of a higher rank said that only President Starzyński was to go with them, no one else.... The President gave me his hand without a word and left the office first, followed by the two officers. From the window I could already see the car leaving the City Hall gate".

In the weeks that followed, Starzyński wandered around the prisons: the Daniłowiczowska Prison, the Rakowiecka Prison and the Pawiak Prison. He could still have reversed his fate - the SZP had prepared an escape plan, but he refused to do so, as he did not want to put anyone else in danger ("I will stay, as many of you would pay for me with their lives, I will persevere to the end").

The trail of the heroic president ends on 23 December 1939 - on that day the Germans took him from prison and deported him in an unknown direction. What happened to him?

According to the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), he was taken by the Gestapo to another place in Warsaw (possibly the Sejm gardens) or its surroundings and shot on the same day.

Professor Tomasz Szarota disagrees, arguing that Starzyński was sent to the Dachau concentration camp, where he died in October 1943 (prior to his death, the SS would play recordings of the September speeches in his cell for three days, then take him outside and execute him).

The mystery of the day of the Warsaw Mayor's death remains unsolved to this day.

– Tomasz Czapla
-Translated by Tomasz Krzyżanowski

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists