“Zapora’s” uniform jacket

This brown Polish uniform jacket belonged to Hieronim Dekutowski, known by the underground name “Zapora”. Its owner was one of the Cichociemni, the Polish special-operations parachutists, and commanded units of the Home Army and the Freedom and Independence Association, WiN. He was a partisan active in the Lublin region. Imprisoned at Mokotów, he made an unsuccessful escape attempt.

The jacket was included in the Warsaw edition of the exhibition about WiN, presented in 2026. The display places personal belongings of its members alongside the history of the organisation founded in Warsaw on 2 September 1945. Its founders intended to shift resistance to the communist takeover of Poland from armed struggle to political activity. The prison on Rakowiecka Street became a place of imprisonment and death for members of WiN's leadership as well as ordinary activists in the clandestine organisation.