Józef Kachel (6 September 1913 – 1983) was a Polish

Boy Scouts Boy Scouts may refer to: * Boy Scout, a participant in the Boy Scout Movement. * Scouting, also known as the Boy Scout Movement. * An organisation in the Scouting Movement, although many of these organizations also have female members. There are ...

Scoutmaster A Scout leader or Scouter generally refers to the trained adult leader of a Scout unit. The terms used vary from country to country, over time, and with the type of unit. Roles There are many different roles a leader can fulfill depending on t ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

, a member of the

Polish United Workers' Party The Polish United Workers' Party ( pl, Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza; ), commonly abbreviated to PZPR, was the communist party which ruled the Polish People's Republic as a one-party state from 1948 to 1989. The PZPR had led two other lega ...

(PZPR), and a

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of the

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Biography

Born in

Beuthen Bytom (Polish pronunciation: ; Silesian: ''Bytōm, Bytōń'', german: Beuthen O.S.) is a city in Upper Silesia, in southern Poland. Located in the Silesian Voivodeship of Poland, the city is 7 km northwest of Katowice, the regional capita ...

Upper Silesia Upper Silesia ( pl, Górny Śląsk; szl, Gůrny Ślůnsk, Gōrny Ślōnsk; cs, Horní Slezsko; german: Oberschlesien; Silesian German: ; la, Silesia Superior) is the southeastern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia, locate ...

, Kachel came from a mining family, and was raised in the Polish tradition. He was a member of the

Union of Poles in Germany Union of Poles in Germany ( pl, Związek Polaków w Niemczech, german: Bund der Polen in Deutschland e.V.) is an organisation of the Polish minority in Germany, founded in 1922. In 1924, the union initiated collaboration between other minorities, ...

. In 1924 he joined the

Polish Scouting Association , type = organization , headquarters = ZHP Headquarters Warsaw , location = Warszawa, Konopnickiej 6 , country = Poland , f-date = 1 November 1918 , founder = Andrzej Małkowski, Olga Małkowska , members = 138,112 , chiefscouttitle = N ...

(Związek Harcerstwa Polskiego or ZHP) in Germany. From March 1935 to September 1939 Kachel was the head of the

in Germany, and organized training courses for Scout instructors at

Warmia Warmia ( pl, Warmia; Latin: ''Varmia'', ''Warmia''; ; Warmian: ''Warńija''; lt, Varmė; Old Prussian: ''Wārmi'') is both a historical and an ethnographic region in northern Poland, forming part of historical Prussia. Its historic capital ...

and Powiśle. After the

Invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week aft ...

of 1939 the ZHP were branded criminals by

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

, who had

executed Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

many Scouts and Guides, along with other possible resistance leaders, but the ZHP carried on as a clandestine organization. In 1940, the Soviet Union executed most of the Boy Scouts held at

Ostashkov Ostashkov (russian: Оста́шков) is a town and the administrative center of Ostashkovsky District in Tver Oblast, Russia, on a peninsula at the southern shore of Lake Seliger, west of Tver, the administrative center of the oblast. Populat ...

prison. Kachel was imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp.Parlamentarzyści RP - Pełny opis rekordu - Józef Kachel
/ref> After the war he obtained an engineering degree in

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic ...

at the University of Mining and Metallurgy in Krakow and worked in Bytom. From 1957 to 1961 he was a

of the

. He took part in the Society for the Development of the Western Lands and the main Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland. Kachel's book ''Letters from Buchenwald'' was published in 1988 by the Silesian Institute in Opole.

References

Sources

*Tadeusz Oracki,''Biographical Dictionary of Warmia, Mazury and Powiśle century (until 1945), ''PAX Publishing Institute, Warsaw, 1983 {{DEFAULTSORT:Kachel, Jozef 1913 births 1983 deaths People from Bytom People from the Province of Silesia Polish United Workers' Party members Members of the Polish Sejm 1957–1961 Polish Scouts and Guides Polish mining engineers Buchenwald concentration camp survivors