Major Michal Issajewicz, aged 91, died March 4 in Warsaw. Issajewicz was an officer of the Home Army. For the most of his military career, he served in Home Army's anti-gestapo unit code-named "Umbrella" (Parasol). He is most famous as an important participant of Operation Kutschera, which was a carefully planned execution of Franz Kutschera, the SS and Reich's Police Chief for Nazi-occupied Warsaw. The operation, the logistics and planning of which took many months, was carried out on February 1, 1944. Issajewicz participated in the assassination as a driver of the vehicle that was to stop Kutschera's limo by slamming into it, and as a third backup-executioner. As both first- and second-executioner were injured during the operation, Issajewicz turned out to be the one to actually finish Kutschera off; during retreat from the execution scene he had received a head wound. Before the war was over, Issajewicz had been arrested by the gestapo and survived an interrogation in its horrific Warsaw prison called Pawiak, as well as incarceration in an equally horrific Stutthof concentration camp, from which he eventually managed to escape.
Below is a short clip from a 1958 Polish movie called Zamach ("The Assassination") about Operation Kutschera. It contains a reconstruction (from what I know, quite an accurate one) of the actual execution.
Major Michal Issajewicz, R.I.P.
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