Michał Szabuniewicz

Portrait of Michał Szabuniewicz (1903-1941) in a police uniform from his service in Giby taken in the 1920s. From 1928 Szabuniewicz was the police commander in Wiżajny. In the same year, he married Maria Jaśkiewicz and lived with her in an employee flat at the police station. They had three children - Irena, who was born in 1929, Tadeusz (1930) and Roman (1934). He has been awarded many times and awarded for exemplary service: the Bronze Cross of Merit, the Independence Medal and the Bronze Medal for Long Service. In 1937 Michał Szabuniewicz was the commander of the police station in Wiżajny, and then he was appointed the commander of the police in Raczki, where he remained until the outbreak of war. After the beginning of the war, he worked as a labourer in the Raczki motor mill. On April 20, 1940, he was arrested during an operation to destroy the Polish intelligentsia. He was offered cooperation with the Gestapo, but Szabuniewicz refused. For his refusal, he was taken to Suwałki prison, from where he was sent to KL Sachsenhausen (prisoner number 24737), and then to the Gusen concentration camp, where he was probably murdered on July 21, 1941. In the camp files it was noted that the cause of Szabuniewicz's death was tuberculosis, which according to the reports of the camp survivors, was not true.