Captain Józef Rzepka (noms de guerre "Krzysztof", "Rekin", "Stefan", "Znicz") was born in 1913 in the village of Bratkowice in Austrian Galicia (now in Rzeszów County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship).
In the summer of 1944, Rzepka was commandant of the Home Army field forces around Rzeszów, which took part in Operation Tempest.
On the night of 7-8 October 1944 Rzepka participated in a failed attempt to free members of the Home Army, who were incarcerated by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, in the Rzeszów castle prison.
In the mid-1940s, Rzepka joined the anti-Communist organization Wolność i Niezawisłość (WiN), as a member of its Information Department.
Arrested in 1948, along with a group of other members of WiN, he was transported to the infamous Mokotów Prison in Warsaw.