Lata 1939-1941.

Summary: In October 1939 the Polish Goverment in Exile, which resided in Paris and Angers, had enormous trouble contacting the rising underground organizations in the occupied Poland. Gen. W. Sikorski appointed Gen. K. Sosnkowski chief of the Headquarters of the Union of Armed Struggle [Związek Walki Zbrojnej]. As direct radio liaison between France and Poland had not yet been made, Sosnkowski used first of all couriers crossing frontiers illegally, mostly from the South, through the Carpathian Mountains. Unexpectedly, he was visited in his Paris office by a man, called Samson Mikiciński, who proposed to carry correspondence and money to Polish addressees and return back with their answers and desiderata. He presented himself as a Pole, a secretary of the Chilean Legation in Warsaw, whose establishment had been arranged, but not implemented before September 1, 1939. Mikiciński's travel to Warsaw with hon. Hector Brines Luco to collect official and personal material of the consulate was a very good cover for the operation. Mikiciński's proposal was accepted and eventually he returned to the Generalgouvernement (General Government; Generalne Gubernatorstwo) four times (perhaps even as many as six or seven) in the period November 1939 - May 1940. He carried with him as diplomatic stuff parcels for charitable purposes and for the underground and a large amount of money, from a dozen million zlotys to perhaps seventy million! The money was useful as the Polish Bank evacuated abroad a great amount of printed money, and the German authorities started gradually to introduce new banknotes for the Polish inhabitants, in return for pre-war notes. The Polish authorities, including Minister Prof. Stanisław Kot, took a great risk when they entrusted Mikiciński not only with the money but also with secret correspondence with addresses of people engaged in the underground movement.

Almost as soon as Mikiciński left Paris for the first time, the Polish authorities were informed by Maj. Tadeusz Nowiński and Maj. Tadeusz Szumowski, two officers of the Second Bureau, that Mikiciński was a suspicious individual, very probably a German Abwehr’s agent. However, to everyone’s great surprise, Mikiciński came back with receipts and plenty of correspondence. What is more, during his next visits he saved and brought to Paris as his “wife” several women, among them Zofia Leśniowska, a daughter of Gen. W. Sikorski and Jadwiga Sosnkowska, the wife of Gen. Sosnkowski! Those successes enabled him to continue his travels, but in fact they were covered by officers of the Abwehrstelle Breslau: Maj. Heinz-Heinrich Fabian (alias dr Scholtz), Capt. Nobis (probably capt. Ernst Nobis), and agent Arthur Herrmann, Fabian’s driver. Maj. Fabian of the Abwehr’s section III f (counter-intelligence abroad) was anxious to discover secrets of the rising Polish underground. His pre-war acquaintance whom he met in Breslau in 1937, or more probably, his carefully selected agent was a precious tool to help him fulfil his task. For half a year Maj. Fabian "authorized the distribution of the funds [for the underground] but demanded and received detailed information regarding the recipients and the amounts disbursed". He even arranged for the release of Karol Eiger, a Jew, a close relative of some Polish minister in the Sikorski’s government, from a concentration camp near Łódź. All that to authenticate his spy, who also made some profitable business on his trips.

Mikiciński's activity was interrupted by the invasion of France in 1940. He did his best to get transferred to Turkey with his consul Luco and to represent the Polish interests in Romania, where the Germans expected he would continue to cooperate. However, knowing about the action of the Gestapo against his "Chilean legation" in Warsaw, Mikiciński tried to rid himself of the Abwehr connection, but he continued sending and receiving correspondence, money and precious things to and from the Generalgouvernement using other ways and still at an enormous profit. His operation grew so much that he became the "owner" of an illegal bank. We cannot rule out that it was Capt. Nobis who eventually decided to expose his agent who did not like to spy on the British in the Middle East and became disloyal. Also quarrels with the officers of the Polish Second Bureau in Bucarest put his disloyal activity in danger. He was doing business first of all for himself. What is more, the Polish intelligence was informed by the British Secret Intelligence Service that Mikiciński's activity had been suspected already in France and that he was probably releasing forged pounds in the Middle East (which in fact was not true).

The pressure of the British intelligence on the Polish Second Bureau, both of which were displeased with the lack of safe communication between the political circles connected with minister Kot and the Generalgouvernement, caused Mikiciński's tragic end. In January 1941 he was captured by SbLt Edward Szarkiewicz (Moses Shapiro), taken by civil plane to Cyprus and next to the British Mandate of Palestine. He was interrogated and after some time killed while transported, during an attempt to escape (at least such is the official version we know). The results of the present analysis of preserved documents have been confronted with the first independent document based on an interrogation carried on by the American Army Counter Intelligence Unit in Vienna, published in the book edited by J. Mendelsohn, "Covert Warfare". Vol. 13. "The Final Solution of the Abwehr", Garland Publ., New York-London 1989, document no. 5 (dated January 31, 1946). The two German witnesses, Mikicinski's driver in the Generalgouvernement Arthur Herrmann and Col. Hans Dehmel from the Abwehrstelle Krakau, confirmed that the suspicions of the Polish and British intelligence had been correct. Mikiciński was a German spy. However, we must say that killing him without obtaining proofs and without even a summary military trial was immoral, especially as none of the people Mikiciński contacted in the Generalgouvernement was eliminated. The Abwehrstelle Krakau was satisfied only with the deep penetration of the Polish underground, which they were able to watch in the years ahead. Mikiciński's unusual activity was I think tolerated as it was performed during the first months of war and when Admiral Wilhelm Canaris of the Abwehr was shocked by the horrendous German crimes perpetrated on civilians and the Polish elites. Some of his and his Abwehr's doings might have had simply human aspect.