Julian Dusik 1894 - 1945

Born 23.12.1894 in Łęki
Died 15.3.1945 in Melk

Biography

Julian Dusik was born on 23 December 1894 in Łęki (municipality of Kęty, Oświęcim district) and was the son of Józef and Agata, née Chwierut. During the First World War he fought in the Austro-Hungarian Army. At the beginning of the 1930s he emigrated to the United States to find work. After a few years he returned to Poland in order to open a shop in Łęki with the money he had earned in the USA. He moved to Łęk-Zasola – to his own house, in which he ran a restaurant and a grocer’s shop. During the occupation he was involved in the resistance in various secret organisations operating near to the Auschwitz camp: in the Związek Walki Zbrodniej/Armia Krajowa (Union of Armed Struggle/Home Army), in the Brzeszcze group of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and in the Peasants’ Battalion.

Julian Dusik provided financial support for these organisations, offered his house as accommodation to partisans and especially gave his assistance in helping the prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp. In 1941 he made contact with prisoners in the Łęk-Zasola region who were forced to work in the fields. He helped them by providing them with extra rations, delivering medicines – often with the permission of SS guards he had bribed – and passing on correspondence to their families. He also gave material assistance to the organisers and participants of aid actions for the prisoners, and his house was used as a collection point where underground organisations stored food, medicine and civilian clothing for escapees from the camp, and where false papers were prepared for them. A denunciation resulted in the arrest of Julian and his daughter Wanda on 27 October 1944 in Łęk-Zasola. He was locked in the Gestapo jail in Oświęcim and then imprisoned in Auschwitz concentration camp – in Block 11. In January 1945 he was evacuated from Auschwitz to Mauthausen, where he died on 15 March 1945. For his participation in the resistance – including for the assistance he rendered prisoners – he was posthumously awarded the Service Cross of Oświęcim.

Jerzy Klistała

 

Translation into English: Joanna White

 

References:

 

Jerzy Klistała: Martyrologium mieszkańców Ziemi Oświęcimskiej, Andrychowskiej, Wadowickiej, Zatora, Jaworzna, Chrzanowa, Trzebini, Kęt, Kalwarii Zebrzydowskiej w latach 1939–1945 – słownik biograficzny [Martyrology of the inhabitants of Oświęcim, Andrychów, Wadowice, Zator, Jaworzno, Chrzanów, Trzebinia, Kęty, Kalwaria Zebrzydowska in the period 1939–1945 – Biographical Dictionary] (Bielsko-Biała 2008).

Location In room