🔍 MăreșteIn memoriam
Jan Kryst (6 April 1922 – 22 May 1943) was a Polish scout and a member of the Polish anti-Nazi resistance. He fought for the Home Army and volunteered for a revenge attack at the Café Adria where he fatally shot several members of the Gestapo before being killed himself.
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Jan Kryst (6 April 1922 – 22 May 1943) was a Polish scout and a member of the Polish anti-Nazi resistance. He fought for the Home Army and volunteered for a revenge attack at the Café Adria where he fatally shot several members of the Gestapo before being killed himself.
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Biography Kryst was born in Modlin, Poland, and raised in Warsaw's Wola district. His father was a worker and a member of the Fighting Organization of the Polish Socialist Party. Kryst graduated from a technical school before the war. He was also a member of the Polish Scouting Association. In September 1939, Kryst participated as a volunteer in the defense of Warsaw. During the German occupation, he joined the Home Army (AK) as a soldier of the Wola Subdistrict, and was a member of 304 platoon. In 1943, he learned that he would soon die of pulmonary tuberculosis, which he had been suffering from for a long time. In view of this, he approached Captain Jerzy Antoni Lewiński "Chuchro" – the commander of the Warsaw District Kedyw – with a request to order an action for him, even one in which he would have no chance of survival. "Chuchro" ordered Kryst to carry out an assassination on 22 May on Gestapo officers at the Café Adria, on Moniuszki Street 10, which was restricted to Germans. At the time, the Kedyw in Warsaw was carrying out a series of assassinations of German Gestapo and SS henchmen in revenge for the torture…
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Commemoration Jan Kryst's action was made public by the Polish Underground. In the "Information Bulletin" the following information appeared:
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The Directorate of Underground Fighting did not use a bomb – this was not about killing just any Germans. It was about finding only Gestapo men from among the crowd of visitors and executing them. The man who undertook this task knew that he would not get out of a place full of military Germans alive. In the pocket of his clothes he carried a letter stating the reasons for the action and threatening increased reprisals if the Gestapo's bestialities did not cease. This fighter, going in full consciousness to his own death, was – Jan Kryst, a locksmith. In 1943, the Bureau of Information and Propaganda of the Home Army Headquarters published a book by Sławomir Dunin-Borkowski, entitled Polska karząca (lit. 'Punishing Poland'), which was dedicated to Kryst. During the Warsaw Uprising on 8 August 1944, a plaque was unveiled in Adria dedicated to "Alan". In 1961, one of the streets in Warsaw's Wola district was named after Jan Kryst. In 1995, a plaque commemorating Kryst's action was unveiled on the building that used to house Café Adria. The émigré poet Kazimierz Wierzyński mentioned Kryst in his poem dedicated to the dissolution of the Home Army:
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Bibliography Königsberg, Wojciech (2023). "Akcja w Café Adria" (PDF). Biblioteka Polska Zbrojna Historia. 1. Strzembosz, Tomasz (1983). Akcje zbrojne podziemnej Warszawy 1939-1944 [Armed actions of underground Warsaw 1939-1944] (in Polish). Warsaw.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)