Polish politician, economist, writer and statesman. President of Warsaw before and during the Siege of Warsaw in 1939. After the start of Polish Defence War of 1939 Starzynski refused to leave Warsaw together with other state authorities and diplomats on September 4, 1939. After the Germans entered the city on September 28, 1939, Starzynski was allowed to continue his service as the president of Warsaw. He was active in organisation of life in the occupied city as well as its reconstruction after the German terror bombing campaign. At the same time he became one of the organizers of Polish Victory Service, the first underground organisation in occupied Poland that eventually became the Home Army. Among other things he provided it with thousands of clean forms of ID cards, birth registry forms and passports. Those documents were later used in validation of false identities of many members of the resistance.On October 5 he was arrested by the Gestapo and, together with several other prominent inhabitants of Warsaw, held hostage as a warrant of safety of Adolf Hitler during a parade of victory held in Warsaw. The following day all of them were released. On October 27, 1939 he was again arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in the Pawiak prison. In December he was yet again offered to escape, but he again refused claiming that it would be too costly to those involved in his escape. His fate remains unknown. According to the most probable version he was transferred to Moabit prison in Berlin and then to Dachau concentration camp where he died. However, several accounts assume that he was either transferred to a potassium mine in Baelberge or that he was held hostage in Warsaw until the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. The most probable date of his death is October 17, 1943 (shot to death in Dachau), although other versions mention August 1944 (Warsaw), 1944 (Baelberge), 1943 (Spandau prison) or January 1940 (Dachau).