Halina Szczypta arrived in the morning with her two children from Essen to the rooms of the Arolsen Archives in Hesse. She should finally get an answer. The answer to a question that has plagued her and her family for more than 80 years. What happened to Mieczysław Kopyto?
In 1941, the seventeen-year-old left his home village in Poland to earn money as a farm laborer for his parents and siblings in Germany. For a year he worked on a farm in Raubling near Rosenheim, wrote home regularly and sent his meager wages in an envelope. In one of his last messages, the young man vaguely reported that he had been wrongly accused by a German woman. Then suddenly the letters stop coming. Instead, in 1942, a package containing Mieczysław’s few belongings arrived in the Polish village: clothes, three pairs of shoes and his razor. His parents and siblings are certain: Mieczysław is no longer alive. He doesn’t return home.
For more than 83 years, not knowing about Mieczysław Kopyto’s fate left a void in the family. Halina Szczypta is the daughter of Mieczyslaw’s eldest sister. Her mother, she remembers, had a small altar with the picture of her younger brother in her apartment throughout her life. “There were always two candles burning on it, and next to it there was a vase with freshly picked flowers.” Every year on All Saints’ Day, the family remembered the lost son, brother and uncle, without having any certainty about what had happened to him in Germany.
Hope for answers
In November 2025 a call comes that raises hope for answers. A volunteer from the search network of the Arolsen Archives, the largest international center focusing on the crimes and victims of the Nazi regime, contacts the branch of the family living in Poland. Letters that Mieczysław wrote to his relatives before his death were found in the Bavarian State Archives in Munich and were never delivered. A cooperation between the Arolsen Archives and the Bavarian State Archives makes it possible to gain insight into the files and the young man’s last words. The family agrees that Halina Szczypta and her children, who live in Essen, will go to Bad Arolsen. Finally there is a prospect of clarity.
In total, more than 50 withheld farewell letters from 844 execution files at the Munich-Stadelheim correctional facility were indexed and digitized in the joint project of the Arolsen Archives and the Bavarian State Archives. Since April of this year, the international volunteer network of the Arolsen Archives has been identifying the surviving relatives of those murdered – including that of Mieczyslaw Kopyto.
At the end of November, Halina Szczypta, her daughter Martha Gödde and her son Markus Szczypta are sitting at a conference table in the Arolsen Archives building in Bad Arolsen in northern Hesse. All three appear tense, but are trying to maintain their composure. He doesn’t really know what to expect now, says Markus Szczypta. “I’m scared, but somehow I’m also happy to be here.” Malgorzata Przybyla, one of the leaders of the Arolsen Archives search team, sits opposite the family members.
Next to the visitors, the historian and expert on Nazi crimes, Alexander Korb, leans over some folders and loose sheets of paper on the table in front of him. He slowly begins to describe what can be reconstructed from the documents he has collected about Mieczysław Kopyto’s last months. He reports that the files show that, in addition to several Polish forced laborers, a young German woman was employed on the farm where Mieczysław worked. The relationship between the two can no longer be clearly clarified. One thing is certain: the woman filed a complaint against Mieczysław – despite the fact that both the farmer and the police officer who was called in apparently tried to stop her from doing so.
The defense attorney is silent
On June 28, 1942, Mieczysław was arrested. After eleven weeks in custody in Rosenheim, he was first transferred to the Munich-Neudeck prison and ultimately to Munich-Stadelheim. He will be tried on September 17th in a special court in the Munich Palace of Justice. At the request of the public prosecutor, three judges sentenced Mieczysław Kopyto to death under the Polish Criminal Law Ordinance for alleged ill-treatment of a German woman and an attempted rape. His defense lawyer is silent.
It is questionable whether the court interpreter, who usually translated from French, had sufficient knowledge of Polish for a trial. On the day of his sentencing, Mieczysław wrote a letter to his parents and siblings that never arrived. In it he protests his innocence; the young woman swore falsely. The farmer for whom he worked chases the accuser away from his farm after the verdict.
“Why?” she asks quietly.
Malgorzata Przybyla takes a deep breath. It’s quiet in the room. Halina Szczypta frowns. She has difficulty following the story in German, but her children look visibly upset and stunned. “Do you want to see him?” asks Malgorzata Przybyla. She hands Halina Szczypta a copy of an enlarged passport photo from the files. She accepts the picture and looks into the serious child’s face with the slightly protruding ears. Tears stream down her cheeks. She repeatedly presses the picture to her face and against her mouth. “Why?” she asks quietly, “he’s just a child.”
Malgorzata Przybyla picks up the copies of the farewell letters. The family would like to hear it in the original, in Polish, first. As she reads and Mieczysław Kopyto’s last words fill the room, Markus Szczypta and his sister also shed tears. The letter says: “Do not cry for me, for I am not alone, we are many. It is God’s will, pray for me.”
If he were still alive today, Mieczysław Kopyto would be 101 years old. The Nazi justice system denied him the right to life and a future. His request for clemency was rejected by the Berlin Justice Ministry on behalf of Adolf Hitler. On November 2, 1942, at 5:05 p.m. in the execution room of the Munich-Stadelheim prison, he was beheaded by an executioner in front of several witnesses. Mieczysław Kopyto was less than 19 years old.
Two minutes later, at 5:07 p.m., nineteen-year-old Polish forced laborer Jan Stepniak died under the same guillotine. He was also convicted by a special court of the Nazi unjust state. The two young men will be buried together with a third victim at 5:30 p.m. in the Perlacher Forst cemetery. At this point, their bodies aren’t even cold. The machinery that has taken the lives of millions will not stand still until the end of the war.
Since the original files and letters are archive material, each of the three family members receives a folder with copies and facsimiles of the letters. Markus Szczypta wants to ensure that all relatives find out more about his great-uncle’s fate. “We want to hold a Holy Mass for Mieczysław in Poland,” he says. The family would also like to visit the grave plot at the Perlacher Forst cemetery.
83 years of uncertainty had to pass before Mieczysław Kopyto’s words found their way home. The people he wanted to reach can no longer hear her. What was then intended for a small group of close relatives now wanders through the many new branches of the family tree that has grown. The young man who was murdered by the Nazi justice system in 1942 is part of the story that connects the family across generations.
