Maciej Matthew Szymański (26 February 1926, Warsaw – 5 May 2015, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) was a member of the Polish Underground Army during World War II (nom de guerre 'Kruczkowski'), an officer in the Polish paramilitary organization NSZ, participant in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 at the age of 18,[1] Canadian architect, draughtsman, and author of self-published memoirs and essays in his retirement.
Maciej was educated by the Congregation of Marian Fathers before the war, and subsequently attended underground classes in the Nazi occupied capital where he passed his matriculation.
[3] In 1941, at the age of 15, Maciej joined the Military Organization Lizard Union (Związek Jaszczurzy) formed by the underground Organizacja Polska (OP).
By 1944 Szymanski became member of the National Armed Forces (NSZ) allied to the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), and entered the partisan battalion Chrobry II.
A so-called 'Amnesty' for partisans, tricked him into revealing his identity, and upon hearing that some of his erstwhile colleagues and friends had been arrested, tortured and murdered by the authorities, he decided to escape from Poland.
There he published recollections and polemics about modern Polish society, which was a disappointment to him having turned during the Soviet era into a much more homogeneous and, in his eyes, impoverished nation: he railed in his writings about Homo Sovieticus.