The ‘cursed soldiers’ (Polish: Żołnierze wyklęci) is a name applied to a variety of Polish resistance movements that were formed in the later stages of World War II and afterwards. Created by former members of the anti-Nazi organizations of WWII, these organizations continued the struggle against the Soviet domination of Poland well into the 1950s. Most of these groups ceased operations in the late 1940s or 1950s. However, the last ‘cursed soldier’, Józef Franczak, was killed in an ambush as late as 1963, almost 20 years after the Soviet take-over of Poland.
History
The main Polish resistance movement in World War II, Armia Krajowa (or simply AK), officially disbanded on 19 January 1945 to avoid armed conflict with the Soviets and the prospect of a civil war. However, many units decided to continue their struggle under new circumstances, seeing the Soviet forces as new occupiers. Soviet partisans operating in Polish or disputed territories had already been ordered by Moscow on June 22, 1943 to engage Polish partisans in combat,[1] and in those territories they actually attacked the Poles more often than they did the Germans.[2] Similarly, the main forces of the Red Army (Northern Group of Forces) and the NKVD conducted operations against AK partisans, even during or directly after the Polish Operation Tempest, which was designed by the Poles to be a joint Polish-Soviet action against the retreating Germans.[3] Stalin’s aim was to ensure that an independent Poland would never reemerge in the postwar period.[4]
The Soviet and Polish communists viewed most of the Polish underground, which was loyal to the Polish government-in-exile, as a force that had to be removed before they could gain complete control over Poland.[2] Future General Secretary of PZPR, Władysław Gomułka, is quoted as saying: “Soldiers of AK are a hostile element which must be removed without mercy.” Another prominent Polish communist, Roman Zambrowski, said that the AK had to be “exterminated.”[3]
The first AK structure designed primarily to deal with the Soviet threat was the NIE, formed in mid-1943. NIE’s goal was not to engage the Soviet forces in combat, but rather to observe and conduct espionage while the Polish government-in-exile decided how to deal with the Soviets. At that time, the exiled government still believed that the solution could be found through negotiations. On May 7, 1945, the NIE (“NO”) was disbanded and transformed into the Delegatura Sił Zbrojnych na Kraj (“Armed Forces Delegation for Homeland”). However, this organization lasted only until August 8, 1945, when the decision was made to disband it and stop partisan resistance on Polish territory.[3]
The first Polish communist government, PKWN, was formed in July 1944, but declined jurisdiction over AK soldiers. Consequently, for more than a year, it was Soviet agencies like the NKVD that took care of dealing with the AK. By the end of the war, approximately 60,000 soldiers of the AK had been arrested, and 50,000 of them were deported to the Soviet Union’s gulags and prisons. Most of those soldiers had been captured by the Soviets during or in the aftermath of Operation Tempest, when many AK units tried to cooperate with the Soviets in a nationwide uprising against the Germans.[3] Other veterans were arrested when they decided to approach the government after being promised amnesty. In 1947, an amnesty was passed for most of the partisans; the Communist authorities expected around 12,000 people to give up their arms, but the actual number of people to come out of the forests eventually reached 53,000. Many of them were arested despite promoses of freedom; after repeated broken promises during the first few years of communist control, AK soldiers stopped trusting the government.[3]
The third AK organization was Wolność i Niezawisłość (“Freedom and Sovereignty”). Again, its primary goal was not combat; rather, the WiN was designed to help AK soldiers transition from the life of partisans to that of civilians. The continued secrecy and conspiracy were necessary in light of the increasing persecution of AK veterans by the communist government. WiN was, however, much in need of funds to pay for false documents and to provide resources for the partisans, many of whom had lost their homes and entire life’s savings in the war. Viewed as enemies of the state, starved of resources, and with a vocal faction advocating armed resistance against the Soviets and their Polish proxies, WiN was far from efficient.[3] A significant victory for the NKVD and the newly created Polish secret police, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa (UB), came in the second half of 1945, when they managed to convince several leaders of the AK and WiN that they truly wanted to offer amnesty to AK members. Within a few months, they managed to gain information about vast numbers of AK/WiN resources and people. Several months later when the (imprisoned) AK and WiN leaders realized their mistake, the organization was crippled and thousands more of their members were arrested.[3] WiN was finally disbanded in 1952.
The NKVD and UB were certainly not beyond using force. In the autumn of 1946, a group of 100-200 soldiers of Narodowe Siły Zbrojne (NSZ) were lured into a trap and massacred. By 1947, a colonel of the communist forces declared that “The terrorist and political underground has ceased to be a threatening force, although there are still men of the forests” that need to be dealt with.[3]
The persecution of the AK was only part of the big picture of Stalinism in Poland. In the period of 1944-1956, approximately two million people were arrested, and over 20,000 (including Witold Pilecki, the hero of Auschwitz) were executed or murdered in communist prisons.[3] A further six million Polish citizens (i.e., one out of every three adult Poles) were classified as suspected members of a ‘reactionary or criminal element’ and subjected to investigation by state agencies.[3] In 1956, an amnesty released 35,000 former AK soldiers from prisons. For the crime of fighting for their homeland, they had spent 10 years or more years in prison. Still, some partisans remained in the countryside, unwilling or simply unable to rejoin the community. They became known as the cursed soldiers. Stanisław Marchewska (“Ryba”) was killed in 1957, and the last AK partisan, Józef Franczak (“Lalek”), was killed in 1963[3] — almost two decades after the Second World War ended. It was only four years later, in 1967, that Adam Boryczka, a soldier of the AK and a member of the elite, British-trained Cichociemny (“The Silent and Hidden”) intelligence and support group, was released from prison. Until the end of the People’s Republic of Poland, AK soldiers were under investigation by the secret police, and it was only in 1989, after the fall of communism, that the sentences of AK soldiers were finally declared invalid and annulled by the Polish courts.[3]
[edit] Organizations
Among the best-known of these organizations were:
Wolność i Niezawisłość (Freedom and Independence, WIN)
Narodowe Siły Zbrojne (National Armed Forces, NSZ)
Narodowe Zjednoczenie Wojskowe (National Military Alliance, NZW)
Konspiracyjne Wojsko Polskie (Underground Polish Army, KWP)
Ruch Oporu Armii Krajowej (Resistance of the Home Army, ROAK)
Armia Krajowa Obywatelska (Citizens’ Home Army, AKO)
NIE (NO)
Delegatura Sił Zbrojnych na Kraj
Wolność i Sprawiedliwość (Freedom and Justice, WIS)
References
^ Tadeusz Piotrowski, Poland’s Holocaust, McFarland & Company, 1997, ISBN 0-7864-0371-3. Google Print, p.88, p.89, p.90
^ a b Review of Sowjetische Partisanen in Weißrußland, by Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, in Sarmatian Review, April 2006
^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Rzeczpospolita, 02.10.04 Nr 232, Wielkie polowanie: Prześladowania akowców w Polsce Ludowej (Great hunt: the persecutions of AK soldiers in the People’s Republic of Poland), last accessed on 7 June 2006
^ Judith Olsak-Glass, Review of Piotrowski’s Poland’s Holocaust in Sarmatian Review, January 1999.
i have something of a personal connection to this as my mother’s family is from Mrzyglod,near Sanok, in SE Poland.Two of my grandmothers brothers were in WiN…they are the man on left and the guy in the center in this photo…
the one on the left died in an “accident” at the factory that he worked in in Sanok around '50-'51…friends of the family later told my grandmother that he had been pushed into a grinder by local communists…a machine that was under repair at the time,supposedly,but it came on somehow when he fell into it…
