Stefan Bronisław Starzyński (19 August 1893[1] – between 21 and 23 December 1939[2]) was a Polish statesman, economist, military officer and Mayor of Warsaw before and during the Siege of 1939.

In August 1914, after the outbreak of the Great War, he joined Piłsudski's Polish Legions and became an ordinary soldier in the 1st Brigade.

He became popular among the inhabitants of the borough of Śródmieście (City Centre) for his action of planting trees and flowers along the main streets.

The area of former airfield on Pole Mokotowskie in the borough of Mokotów was cut in two parts by Aleje Niepodległości (Avenue of Independence), nowadays one of the main streets of Warsaw.

During his presidency: After the start of Polish Defensive War of 1939 Starzyński, refused to leave Warsaw together with other state authorities and diplomats on 4 September 1939.

On 7 September the forces of 4th German Panzer Division managed to break the Polish lines near Częstochowa and started their march towards Warsaw.

However, at that stage the Polish authorities wanted to preserve younger reservists for future fighting, so the spokesman of the garrison of Warsaw issued a communique in which he ordered all young men to leave the city.

According to many sources from the epoch his daily speeches were a crucial factor in keeping the morale of both the soldiers and the civilians high during the Siege of Warsaw.

He also managed to organise shelter for almost all civilian refugees from other parts of Poland and houses destroyed by German aerial bombardment.

The pilot of the prototype PZL.46 Sum plane that managed to escape from internment in Romania and landed safely in besieged Warsaw offered himself to evacuate Starzyński to Lithuania.

At the same time he became one of the organizers of Służba Zwycięstwu Polski, the first underground organisation in occupied Poland that eventually became the Armia Krajowa.

His fate remained unknown until, on 8 September 2014, the Polish IPN-Institute of National Remembrance (Instytut Pamięci Narodowej) officially closed the investigation of the circumstances of his death.

Based on a recent eyewitness testimony,[3] the IPN's commission of inquiry came to the conclusion that Stefan Starzyński was shot by the Gestapo at some point between 21 and 23 December 1939. in Warsaw or its surroundings.

[4] According to an earlier version of the account, which has been discarded by the IPN, it was believed that Starzyński had been transferred to Moabit prison in Berlin and then to Dachau concentration camp, where he was thought to have died.

The documents had been held in the archives of former East German Ministry of State Security ("Stasi"), and they claimed that Starzyński was tortured and died on 19 March 1944 in a potassium salt mine, where he was allegedly held captive at a prisoner of subsidiaries camp and slave-worked in Leipzig Enterprise Transport, which produced aircraft parts.

According to witnesses, he was allegedly placed on the board set on trestles, holding 2 full buckets of water, under the "penalty" of being shot if he would drop them.

In 2003 the readers of news papers and the spectators of the Warsaw branch of the public television elected Starzyński as the Varsovian of the Century by a huge majority of votes.