In the spotlight: Władysław Sikorski

The exhumation will be part of an investigation launched by the Katowice branch of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) to look into the general's mysterious death in a plane crash in July 1943.

An official report drafted by the British government said that Sikorski died in Gibraltar in the crash of a Royal Air Force B24 Liberator while returning from the Middle East where he had been inspecting Polish troops. The exact cause of the accident was never reported, however, and historians have put forth a number of theories, some based upon the assumption that the general had actually been murdered before the plane crash. The version that the IPN investigators are considering most seriously suggests that Soviet agents were involved in Sikorski's death.

Speculation that Sikorski had been murdered entered public debate in July, on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of his death, and led a number of leading Polish political and religious leaders to weigh in on the issue.

Born in 1881 in the southern city of Tuszów Narodowy, Sikorski fought in World War I and the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921. In the 1920s he held a number of top political posts, including prime minister and minister for military affairs. Sikorski was buried in a Polish cemetery in Newark, Great Britain. In 1993, his body was transferred to Kraków's Wawel Cathedral.