The Montelupich Prison () is a historic prison in Kraków, Poland. It was built in the 16th century and converted into part of a military tribunal in the 19th century.Ulica Montelupich ("street of the Montelupis") itself is named after the Montelupi manor house (kamienica) located at Montelupich street Number 7, the so called Kamienica Montelupich built in the 16th century, and in the 19th century adapted as part of the Austrian military tribunal. It was used by the Gestapo during World War II and has been called "one of the most terrible Nazi prisons in [occupied] Poland".Adam Bajcar, Poland: A Guidebook for Tourists, tr. S. Tarnowski, Warsaw, Interpress Publishers, 1972. So also: Studia Historyczne, vol. 30, 1987, p. 106: "Więzienie Montelupich w Krakowie należało do najcięższych w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie" (The Montelupich Prison in Kraków was among the most severe prisons in the General Government). The Gestapo took over the facility from the German Sicherheitspolizei at the end of March 1941. One of the Nazi officials responsible for overseeing the Montelupich Prison was Ludwig Hahn.
The prison population during World War II consisted predominantly of ethnically Polish political prisoners and victims of Gestapo street raids in Poland, but it also housed German SS and Security Service (SD) members serving jail terms. Other occupants included British and Soviet spies, parachutists, soldiers who had deserted the Waffen-SS, and convicts of ordinary crimes. Between 1940 and 1944, approximately 50,000 prisoners either passed through Montelupich or died in it.Józef Batko, Gestapowcy, Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1985. . Cited in Cezary Leżeński's review of the book in Nowe Książki, 1986, p. 127. Kurkiewiczowa states that the interrogation methods employed by the Germans were equivalent to "medieval tortures".
Although the inscription on the plaque by the side door of the prison in the attached 1939 photograph (Fig. 1) reads, "Sicherheits-Polizei-Gefängnis Montelupich", the name "Montelupich Prison" is informal, having been accepted into history only because of popular usage. The Montelupich facility was the detention center of the first instance used by the Nazis to imprison the Polish professors from Jagiellonian University arrested in 1939 in the so-called Sonderaktion Krakau, an operation designed to eliminate Polish intelligentsia. Over 1,700 Polish prisoners were eventually massacred at Fort 49 of the Kraków Fortress and its adjacent forest, and deportations of Polish prisoners to concentration camps, including Ravensbrück and Auschwitz, were also carried out. The prison also contained a cell for kidnapped Polish children under the age of 10, with an average capacity of about 70 children, who were then sent to concentration camps and executed. In January 1944, 232 prisoners from Montelupich were executed by a Nazi firing squad at Pełkinie.Przewodnik po upamiętnionych miejscach walk i męczeństwa: lata wojny 1939–1945, ed. Rada Ochrony Pomników Walki i Męczeństwa, 2nd ed., Warsaw, Sport i Turystyka, 1966, p. 299. In late January or early February 1944, Wilhelm Koppe issued an order for the execution of 100 Montelupich prisoners as a reprisal for the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Hans Frank.Przewodnik po upamiętnionych miejscach walk i męczeństwa: lata wojny 1939–1945, ed. Rada Ochrony Pomników Walki i Męczeństwa, 2nd ed., Warsaw, Sport i Turystyka, 1966, p. 186. In Wola Filipowska (near Kraków), a monument commemorates the Nazi execution of 42 hostages, all Montelupich prisoners who died on the spot before a firing squad on 23 November 1943.
After World War II, Montelupich became a Soviet prison where NKVD and Urząd Bezpieczeństwa tortured and murdered Polish soldiers of the Home Army. Currently, the building serves as a temporary arrest and detention facility for men and women, with 158 jail cells and a prison hospital with an additional 22 cells.
History of the property
The building housing the prison was not originally constructed for its purpose, but instead was a historical property that was redecorated in the Italianate Renaissance style in 1556 by the Italian Montelupi family, who introduced the first postal service in Poland for the court of Sigismund III Vasa.Letizia Gianni, Polonia: Varsavia, Lublino, Cracovia, Breslavia, Toruń, Danzica, i Monti Tatra e la Masuria, Milan, Touring Club Italiano, 2005, p. 101. . Their Kraków manor house, known in Polish as the Kamienica Montelupich (Palazzo Montelupi in Italian), at Number 7 of the street to which it gave the name, was the starting point of the first international postal coach in Poland which departed from here for Venice in 1558.Jan Adamczewski, Kraków od A do Z, Kraków, Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1980, p. 85. The Jalu Kurek Park in Kraków was formerly the palace garden of the Palazzo Montelupi.
Current status The Montelupich Prison was the site of the last execution in Poland before the death penalty was abolished: the hanging of Stanisław Czabański, who had been convicted of raping and murdering a woman, on 21 April 1988."Gwałciciel i zabójca zawisł: ostatnia egzekucja w Polsce", Gazeta Wyborcza, 20 April 2011. (see online).
Despite being officially recognized as both a historical monument and a place of martyrdom, the facility continues to be operated to this day as a combination of remand prison and ordinary correctional facility by the Polish Prison Administration (Służba Więzienna), a unit of the Polish Justice Ministry. Its current official name is Areszt Śledczy w Krakowie. The infamous history of this facility continues to the present day, as evident in the 2008 death of the Romanian detainee, Claudiu Crulic (1975–2008), an incident condemned by human rights groups (such as the Human Rights House Foundation of Oslo, Norway) and which occasioned the resignation of the Romanian Foreign Affairs Minister, Adrian Cioroianu.Human Rights House Foundation, "Starvation Death of a Romanian at a Detention Center." Oslo, Norway.
Vincent A. Lapomarda writes in his book on the Nazi terror that:On inquiring about Montelupich, on Montelupi Street, when I was in Kraków on 18 August 1986, I was able to view it from outside and learned that even today, while still operating, it has not lost the evil reputation that it had during the Nazi occupation.Vincent A. Lapomarda, The Jesuits and the Third Reich, Lewiston (New York), Edwin Mellen Press, 1989, p. 136, n. 15. .
Notable inmates
Józef Archutowski (1879–1944; professor of theology, long-term Dean of the Theology Department of the Jagiellonian University; victim of Sonderaktion Krakau) Teodor Augustyn (1895–1963; veteran of Silesian Uprisings in 1919–1921, tracked down by the Nazis in 1940 and incarcerated at Montelupich before being deported to Auschwitz) Karol Bacz (1900–1984; decorated Polish veteran of the Polish–Soviet War and Nazi invasion of Poland; incarcerated at Montelupich 1939–1940 as a result of a łapanka) Józef Badura (1903–1943; Polish educator and social activist in Cieszyn Silesia; incarcerated by the Gestapo in 1942, he was executed by firearm at Montelupich in 1943) Maksymilian Basista (1883–1967; founder and editor-in-chief of several newspapers in Rybnik, a city for which he served as vice-mayor: included in the Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen, a listing – prepared by the Nazis before the war – of people to be eliminated as the first priority after the Nazi invasion of Poland) Marian Batko (1901–1941; educator, incarcerated in 1941, subsequently deported to Auschwitz where he volunteered to die in exchange for another prisoner condemned to death, saving the other's life; decorated posthumously with the Golden Cross of the Order of Virtuti Militari, the country's highest decoration for heroism in time of war) Henryk Batowski (1907–1999; historian, professor in Jagiellonian University; son of the painter Stanisław Kaczor-Batowski; author of nearly 100 books, including Greckie rewolucje ("Greek Revolutions"; 1935), and Europa zmierza ku przepaści ("Europe is Heading for an Abyss", 1977); victim of Sonderaktion Krakau, eventually released by the Nazis owing to the personal intervention in Ivo Andrić, a future Nobel Prize winner in Literature, who served at the time as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia's ambassador to Germany) Janina Bednarska (née Dubińska, 1912–1941; wife of Prof. Stefan Bednarski (see below), after arrest of husband made efforts to obtain his release, continuing her efforts on behalf of other victims of Sonderaktion Krakau even after having received the news of her husband's death at Sachsenhausen concentration camp; subsequently joined the underground Union of Armed Struggle; incarcerated at Montelupich, she was executed by firearm off-premises) Stanisław Bednarski (1896–1942; professor of art history and publisher; incarcerated at Montelupich from 8 July 1940; beatification in process (ecclesiastical title: "Servant of God")) Stefan Bednarski (1868–1940; husband of Janina Bednarska (née Dubińska; see above); professor of Russian language in Jagiellonian University, victim of Sonderaktion Krakau; deported from Montelupich to Sachsenhausen where he died (of pneumonia) on 1 January 1940) Władysław Błądziński (1908–1944; Polish clergyman and educator in Secret Universities; incarcerated at Montelupich from 25 April 1944, subsequently deported to Gross-Rosen where he secretly ministered to the prisoners; was murdered by being pushed off a precipice in the stone quarry by an SS-man; one of the so-called "108 Martyrs of World War II" beatified by Pope John Paul II on 13 June 1999 (ecclesiastical title: "Venerable")) Andrzej Bolewski (1906–2002; mineralogist and petrographer, professor in Jagiellonian University; victim of Sonderaktion Krakau; released by the Nazis as a result of a collective intervention by Italian and Spanish scholars) Władysław Boziewicz (1886–1946; captain in the army of the Second Polish Republic, author of Polski Kodeks Honorowy (Polish Code of Honour); incarcerated at Montelupich for aiding partisans during the war) Józef Cyrek (1904–1940; Polish writer and magazine editor; incarcerated at Montelupich just 70 days after the outbreak of the war on 10 November 1939, he was murdered at Auschwitz less than ten months later; beatification in process (ecclesiastical title: "Servant of God")) Stanisław Czabański (1959–1988; a Polish assailant and murderer, and the last person to ever be judicially executed by Poland; his execution on 21 April 1988 took place at the Montelupich Prison gallows (used for civilian crimes by that time); a moratorium on executions was instated in 1989, and capital punishment was abolished in Poland in 1997) Michał Czajczyk (1915–1945; champion basketball player; incarcerated at Montelupich in December 1944, he was murdered at the Flossenbürg concentration camp in the last days of the war in April 1945) Gusta Davidson Draenger (properly Gusta Dawidsohn-Draengerowa, also known as Justyna; 1917–1943; author of Pamiętnik Justyny (Justyna's Narrative), written during the author's lengthy imprisonment at Montelupich, from which she escaped. Stanisław Dąbrowa-Kostka (b. 1924; soldier of the Armia Krajowa and writer; victim of post-War repressions by the Communist regime of Poland, incarcerated at Montelupich during the period 1946–1949; author of six books, including W okupowanym Krakowie: 6 IX 1939–18 I 1945 ("In Nazi-occupied Kraków"; 1972), and Rysunki więzienne 1946–1949 Stanisława Dąbrowy-Kostki: katalog wystawy: grudzień 2003 ("Drawings from Prison, 1946–1949", published in the period of the Third Republic in 2003)) Kazimierz Dembowski (1912–1942; Polish clergyman, a Jesuit; a magazine and book editor working for a religious publishing house; arrested by Gestapo just seventy days after Nazi invasion of Poland; beatification in process (ecclesiastical title: "Servant of God"))