Firth, T T [alias Tomasz Kopystynski]

Civilian Thomas Thadeus [alias Tomasz Kopystynski] Firth

Family/Last name:
Firth
Forename(s) and initial(s):
Thomas Thadeus [alias Tomasz Kopystynski]
Place of birth:
Tokyo
Date of birth:
3/1/1922
Nationality:
British
Military Unit:
Civilian
Rank when captured:
Civilian
Place of capture:
Warsaw
Date of capture:
1/1942
Camp
Montelupich [Gestapo]
Data sources
The National Archives (UK)Other Sources (Correspondence on AIR 46/25 at TNA)
View a commemorative certificate for this prisoner

This man was a British national living in Warsaw in 1939. He was arrested by the Gestapo in January 1942 on suspicion of aiding POW escapees who reached Warsaw. He successfully avoided being uncovered as a British national by adopting a Polish persona (he was fluent in Polish having a Polish mother and having lived in Warsaw from 1930). He was released in August 1943 by the Gestapo after they failed to uncover any proof of his involvement with POW escapees who reached Warsaw. He made his way eventually to Moscow and the care of the British Military Mission there and was repatriated to the UK via Murmansk in December 1944.

He wrote a book of his experiences ‘Prisoner of the Gestapo A Memoir of Survival and Captivity in Wartime Poland’

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