Klimczak, nom de guerre Szron (Frost), was born on February 15, 1914, and started serving in the Polish armed forces in 1936.
He took part in the September Campaign of 1939, the defensive war after Poland was attacked by Nazi Germany on September 1 and then by Soviet Russia on September 17 that year.
Heavily wounded in the battle on the Bzura River, he was evacuated to Warsaw and worked in a tobacco factory.
He joined Poland’s underground Home Army. After the fall of the Warsaw Uprising in October 1944, he managed to escape while being transported to a German POW camp.
He returned to Warsaw, which was then a city of ruins, after hiding in the countryside for a year. He was interrogated by communist secret police. He was promoted to colonel in 2017.
In her birthday greetings to Klimczak, Polish parliamentary Speaker Elżbieta Witek recalled some of the momentous events that he witnessed in his life.
“You witnessed the rebirth of the Republic of Poland" in 1918 "and the great victory of 1920" in the Polish-Soviet War, Witek wrote. "You took part in the September Campaign as a Polish Army soldier and crowned your clandestine activity in the Home Army with a heroic participation in the Warsaw Rising."
Witek added that Klimczak “carried the tradition of independence deep in his heart, as he did his commander’s order to pass on to successive generations the truth about the Warsaw Rising, the sense of patriotism and the deep meaning of the [traditional Polish] motto ‘God, Honour, Homeland.’”
After last year’s death of Stanisław Kowalski, Klimczak is Poland’s oldest living man.
(mk/gs)