2024 Week 5 : Influencer #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

My husband's grandfather, Wladyslaw Stepek was a man with strong political opinions. He grew up in Haczow, in south east Poland at the turn of the 20th century. Towards the end of WW1 he was arrested by the Austrian occupying forces for agitating against their presence in his country. When he was released he continued to oppose Austrian rule and, after a fiery speech to his community in a local hall, he persuaded over one hundred men to attack and successfully disarm the nearby Austrian garrison.

Part 2 of 3 documents we have found, giving a contemporary's account of the Wladyslaw's speech to raise volunteers, with some of their names (own photo)

After the war ended and Poland regained its independence, he volunteered to join the Polish armed forces whose task was to defend the newly established borders with Russia. Most of this took place in modern day Ukraine.

Wladyslaw (highlighted) around March 1920 in group defending Poland's borders (own photo)

In the following two decades he championed equality for all the ethnic minorities then in Poland, primarily Ukrainians, Jews, Czechs, Lithuanians and even Germans. He vehemently opposed the right wing regime that ruled Poland in the 1930s and for this he was threatened with imprisonment at a notorious political labour camp, now in Belarus.

He died in 1943, still fighting for Poland's freedom in the Polish underground army during WW2.

Wladyslaw Stepek ( 1893-1943)

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