Stanisà Âaw Haller (de Hallenburg; 26 April 1872 â Spring 1940) was a Polish politician and general who was murdered in the Katyn massacre. He was the cousin of General Józef Haller.
Between 1894 and 1918 Haller served in the Austro-Hungarian Army. Among other military functions, he was commandant of Fortress Kraków. In 1918 he joined the renascent Polish Army. During the Polish-Soviet War he contributed to the defeat of Budionny's army and its expulsion beyond the Bug River. In 1919âÂÂ1920, 1923âÂÂ25 and in May 1926 he was Chief of the Polish General Staff. After 1926 he was placed in retirement as a political opponent of the new regime headed by Józef Pià Âsudski.
In 1939 he was arrested by the Soviets after their attack on Poland and placed in a POW camp in Starobielsk. Along with other Polish POWs, he was murdered by the NKVD in April 1940, just before his sixty-eighth birthday, in Piatykhatky near Kharkov, in what is collectively called the Katyn Massacre.
He is buried at the Polish War Cemetery in Kharkov.
Stanisà Âaw Haller is patron of the 5th command regiment of the Kraków-based Polish 2nd Mechanized Corps.
Among the victims of the Katyn Massacre were 14 Polish military leaders, including Leon Billewicz, Bronisà Âaw Bohaterewicz, Xawery Czernicki, Henryk Minkiewicz, Kazimierz Orlik-à Âukoski, Konstanty Plisowski, Rudolf Prich (murdered in Lwow), Franciszek Sikorski, Leonard Skierski, Piotr Skuratowicz, Mieczysà Âaw Smorawià Âski, and Alojzy Wir-Konas (promoted posthumously).