Witold Kruczek
Witold Kruczek was a Polish physicist, academic, writer and translator of scientific literature in the field of physics, and a Warsaw insurgent.
World War II activity
After the outbreak of World War II, he worked as a miner and then as a cargo transport driver for the "Społem" cooperative in Częstochowa. Saving a friend from the Częstochowa ghetto, he and him got to Warsaw in 1943, where the following year he was caught up in the Warsaw Uprising.During the uprising, he was a soldier of the 2nd platoon of the Protection Unit of the Military Publishing House - Information and Propaganda Office - Headquarters of the Home Army.
After the fall of the uprising, he was deported by Pruszków to Frankfurt (Oder), and then to Bremervörde and Pongau. He was employed in the construction of the railway in Tschupbach. In the atmosphere of the approaching end of the war, he got through the border with Switzerland to the 2nd Infantry Division of General Bronisław Prugar-Ketling, which had been interned there since 1940, and was repatriated to Poland after the end of hostilities.
Education and career
Kruczek studied at the Lodz University of Technology and then at the Warsaw University of Technology, where he was a long-time lecturer at the Faculty of Technical Physics and Applied Mathematics. It is, among others, author of exercises in physics, published in numerous popular science publications, translator of scientific literature in the field of physics.In 2019, the Military Publishing Institute published a book entitled One of my names is life. Conversations with those who survived the hell of war - a series of interviews with Polish veterans of World War II, including an interview with Witold Kruczek by Piotr Korczyński.
In January 2022, he celebrated his centenary at the Faculty of Physics of the Warsaw University of Technology.
Personal life and death
Kruczek was born to Władysław Kruczek, a mining engineer, and Tamara née Abuładze, a native Georgian with partial Greek roots.Kruczek was married twice, and had five children. He lived in the Przyjaźń housing estate in Warsaw, in the Bemowo district of Warsaw. Kruczek died on 15 October 2024, at the age of 102.