Otto Schimek was an Austrian soldier in the German Wehrmacht during World War II who served as a member of a firing squad. He was himself executed, allegedly for refusing to carry out a death sentence on Poles, making him a symbol of pacifism and Austrian resistance to Nazism. The truthfulness of the story has been disputed, with critics arguing that the story is not based on any reliable documents and is a fabrication.

Dębica is a town in southeastern Poland with 44,692 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is the capital of Dębica County. Since 1999 it has been situated in the Podkarpackie Voivodeship; it had previously been in the Tarnów Voivodeship (1975–1998). Dębica belongs to the historic province of Lesser Poland, and for centuries it was part of the Sandomierz Voivodeship.