Maria Albin Boniecki

The Three Eagles Mausoleum was destroyed after the war and a reconstruction was created in 1962 by Stanisław Strzyżyński, by order of the Polish government and against Boniecki’s wishes. This reconstruction (see External links) remains on display at the Majdanek Museum.

In 1957 the couple moved to Denver, USA, and became US citizens in 1964. Later they moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

With the help of the Polish Home Army, Boniecki escaped in 1944 and, rather than fleeing the country, resumed his counterintelligence activities. He took part in the Warsaw Uprising and was again captured by the Nazis. He passed through the German prisoner-of-war camps at Lamsdorf, Gross Born, and finally Sandbostel, where he was liberated by British forces.

He was arrested by the Gestapo in October 1942 and imprisoned and interrogated at the infamous Pawiak prison. Thence he was sent to Majdanek concentration camp.

After the war broke out, Boniecki joined the Polish underground resistance. In 1939 he worked as a volunteer medic, and from 1940 to 1942 took part in counterintelligence in Warsaw, Sub-district II under the pseudonym “Adam”.

Boniecki studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and graduated in 1929. He produced many sculptures before the war, notably Birth of Thought, presently held at the National Museum, Warsaw. He was awarded a permanent membership of Zachęta, the Polish Masters National Museum of Fine Arts.

Boniecki’s father, a Polish patriot, was deported to Siberia when Boniecki was five. Boniecki’s mother chose to follow with her children. The circumstances following the Russian Revolution produced an opportunity for Boniecki, his mother and his siblings to slip away. With much difficulty they found a way to Poland, arriving in 1921.

Maria Albin Bończa-Boniecki (1908–1995) was a Polish artist. A survivor of the Nazi concentration camp Majdanek, he emigrated to the United States of America in 1957.