Jan Rodowicz was born on 7 March 1923 in Warsaw. Rodowicz was a son of Kazimierz Rodowicz, an engineer and professor at the Warsaw University of Technology, and Zofia Bortnowska, sister of General Władysław Bortnowski. He attended the Private School of the Society of the Mazovian Land, where he became a member of the 21st Warsaw Scouting Team named after General Ignacy Prądzyński.

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He later attended the Warsaw State Gymnasium, and later, in the years 1935-39, the Stefan Batory Secondary School. During this period, he also became a member of the 23rd Bolesław Chrobry Warsaw Scout Troop, the so-called Pomarańczarnia.

“Anoda” was an active member of the underground since the start of the 2nd World War in 1939 when he was 16 years old. As a soldier of the Grey Ranks, he took part in the most important combat actions of the Assault Groups in 1943: the action at the Arsenal (he was the first to throw a bottle of petrol), the rescue of prisoners near Celestynów, and the actions near Czarnocin, Sieczychy, and Wilanów. 

 

In the Warsaw Uprising, he fought in the ‘Radosław’ grouping. He was wounded four times.

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In August 1944, he was awarded the Silver Cross of the Virtuti Militari. After the war, he studied at the Faculty of Architecture at Warsaw Polytechnic. Rodowicz was arrested on Christmas Eve in 1948.

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7 January 1949, this Home Army ace, hero of Operation Arsenal and the Warsaw Uprising Jan Rodowicz "Anoda" died a mysterious death during an interrogation at the Ministry of Public Security in Warsaw. His interrogators said he jumped out of a window, but he may have been beaten to death and then thrown out. In communist times, murder was sometimes called suicide.

 

He didn't end up in the building because of these few months in 1945, when he collected intel about the communist takeover of the country for the Armed Forces Delegation for Poland. The Delegation has since been dissolved, and "Anoda" has been busy commemorating his friends killed in the Warsaw Uprising and studying architecture.

 

He ended up in the building because communist takeover of Poland required elimination of the likes of him, a handful of survivors who'd made it through the German occupation and "Operation Tempest" battles like the Warsaw Uprising. These people took orders from the legal government in London exile, and Stalin's cronies in Poland knew they'd be a problem.

 

After WW2, Rodowicz was not involved in armed struggle against the communists - only collecting information until the dissolution of the Armed Forces Delegation - and went on with his life. Then, he died and disappeared. For decades, he was left out of the pantheon of heroes (one can even say that he was banned out of collective memory and history) and could not be openly commemorated until after 1989.

 

In June 2021, “Anoda” was honored with a statue unveiled outside the Ministry of Justice building in Warsaw. In communist times, the building was called the Ministry of Public Security.

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Source: Institute of National Remembrance on Facebook

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