Stanisław Jankowski

This article is about a Polish soldier, resistance member and architect. For a Polish politician and resistance member, see Jan Stanisław Jankowski.

Stanisław Jankowski (29 September 1911 – 5 March 2002)

Stanisław Jankowski (code name: "Agaton") was an SOE agent and Polish resistance fighter during World War II, and an architect thereafter, who played a prominent role in the post-war reconstruction of Warsaw.

Life

Jankowski was a student and later, assistant lecturer in architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology in the Second Polish Republic before World War II. He was mobilized as an officer during the German invasion of Poland of 1939. He was captured by the Soviets in eastern Poland but escaped and joined the Polish Armed Forces in the West. Jankowski became an SOE agent (Cichociemny) and in 1942 was parachuted back into occupied Poland, where he became an expert document forger (codename "Agaton") for the Polish resistance. In 1944, he took part in the Warsaw Uprising (member of the Batalion Pięść in the Radosław Group). He was taken prisoner by the Germans. After the end of the Uprising, he became an aide-de-camp to General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, the leader of the Polish Home Army.

After the war, he resumed his career as an architect. He took part in the reconstruction of Warsaw; many of his projects took him abroad (to Iraq, Peru, Yugoslavia and Vietnam).

Autobiography

• Stanisław Jankowski 'Agaton' (1980). Z fałszywym Ausweisem w prawdziwej Warszawie: Wspomnienia 1939-1946. Warszawa: Biblioteka Syrenki (memoires)

Honours and awards

Jankowski was the recipient of many medals and awards, military and civilian:

Virtuti Militari

Cross of Valour, twice

Order of the Banner of Labour Class II

Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta

Home Army Cross

three National Arts Awards

Gold Medal for Reconstruction of Warsaw

Honorary Citizen of Warsaw (1995)