Goetel joined the Polish resistance movement Armia Krajowa (AK, or Home Army) in World War II, and was temporarily imprisoned in Pawiak by the SS. He has sometimes been described as the last victim of Katyn. He was blacklisted in communist Poland and driven out of the country in 1945 with an arrest warrant issued against him by the secret police, because the Germans arranged for him to participate in the original Katyn delegation on behalf of the AK, and also because in his postwar writings he demanded justice for the victims of Katyn. Goetel was proposed as a witness for the Katyn delegation by lawyer Ludwig Fischer, the German governor of Warsaw, but ultimately, the Polish delegation refused to help the Nazi propaganda efforts any further, and secretly informed the Polish government-in-exile about their findings.