Marian KOZIELEWSKI
Warsaw Police
Marian Kozielewski was Jan Karski’s older brother and the patron of Warsaw Police. Karski was born Jan Kozielewski.
He was the first commander of the so-called Blue Police (the German-controlled force made up of Poles) in WW2 occupied Warsaw. He never pledged allegiance to Hitler and quickly became involved with Polish underground resistance.
Kozielewski, a WWI and Polish-Soviet War veteran, as well as the participant of the 1939 September Campaign, and a former policeman had to report on duty when the German occupation began. In the General Government area of Poland, the German State was represented by German police, while former police of the Polish State, their uniforms stripped of the national emblems, were only needed to implement German policy.
The lack of trust was justified, since many of its members worked for the underground (Home Army), and most took the side of Polish society when they could get away with it; after all, they’d been Polish state functionaries and owed no loyalty to the Third Reich.
As early as 1939, Marian helped his brother Jan write his first report. Karski was the legendary emissary of the Polish Underground State who reported to the Allies about the German crimes committed in occupied Poland.
Admittedly, there were several opportunists in the ranks of the Blue Police, people who took advantage of anti-Polish and anti-Jewish regulations of the German authorities and exploited the situation, committing all kinds of crimes against civilians, including murders.
Nevertheless, Marian Kozielewski, and after his arrest in May 1940, Aleksander Reszczyński, the second-in-command of the Blue Police in occupied Warsaw, closely cooperated with the resistance, severely punishing those of their subordinates who brought disgrace to the uniform.
Marian Kozielewski was arrested during the German AB Aktion aimed at exterminating Polish pre-war intelligentsia and elites, imprisoned in the notorious Gestapo Pawiak prison in occupied Warsaw and was later sent to Auschwitz. He was released in 1941, soon resumed his work for Polish underground resistance and fought during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.
After the war, he moved to France and later to Canada. He died in the United States, committing suicide in 1964.
Source: Institute of National Remembrance Facebook post