Piotr Śmietański

Piotr Śmietański
Piotr Śmietański
Born	(1899-06-27)June 27, 1899 Zawady village, modern Poland
Died	(1950-02-23)February 23, 1950? place unknown
Citizenship	Polish
Occupation	Executioner
Known for	State Security Services (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa)

Staff Sergeant Piotr Śmietański (born 27 June 1899 in Zawady village – died probably on 23 February 1950), was a Jewish-Polish non-commissioned officer of the communist secret police Urząd Bezpieczeństwa and one of the main executioners in Stalinist Poland.

Śmietański was stationed at the Mokotów Prison in the Warsaw borough of Mokotów (Polish: Więzienie mokotowskie) known also as Rakowiecka Prison located at 37 Rakowiecka Street. From World War II until the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989, Mokotów Prison – where Śmietański conducted his deeds – was a place of detention, torture and execution of the Polish anti-communist opposition.

Śmietański – nicknamed by the inmates as the "Butcher of the Mokotow Prison" – executed personally and supervised the executions of hundreds of opponents of the Stalinist regime in PRL. Among them were prominent politicians, social activists and Polish underground fighters, including Lieutenants Jerzy Miatkowski, Tadeusz Pelak, Edmund Tudruj, Arkadiusz Wasilewski, Roman Gronski, Capt. Stanislaw Lukasik, Comdt. Hieronim Dekutowski (killed by Śmietański in one day, on March 7, 1949), Adam Doboszyński (August 29), Major Zygmunt Szendzielarz, Lieutenants Henryk Borowski, Antoni Olechnowicz, Lucjan Minkiewicz (February 8, 1951), Capt. Stanisław Sojczyński, Lt. Antoni Wodyński from AK, and countless others, including victims of the notorious March 1, 1951 Mokotów Prison execution, who were given five consecutive death sentences each.Brig. General Emil August Fieldorf was hanged rather than shot to be humiliated.