ZOLNIERZE WYKLECI Freedom Fighters Zebrowski

Zolnierze Wykleci, by Grzegorz Wasowski and Leszek Zebrowski. 1999

A Photo-Filled One-Volume Encyclopedia on the Polish Guerrilla Resistance Against Soviet Rule

THE CURSED SOLDIERS: THE ANTI-COMMUNIST ARMED UNDERGROUND AFTER 1944 is the title of this Polish-language book. It features almost exhaustive biographical detail about Underground guerrilla personages. There is far too much worthwhile content in this work to cover even in an oversized review.

COMMUNISM: FORCED ON POLAND BY THE USSR

Some of the LEWACTWO would have us believe that Polish Communist rule had largely been home-grown. Against such nonsense, authors Grzegorz Masowski and Leszek Zebrowski quote a May 20-21, 1945 statement by Wladyslaw Gomulka, which was spoken already 1.5 years after the Soviet “liberation” of Poland from Nazi German rule. Gomulka candidly remarked that the Polish Communist forces were too weak to deal with the “reactionaries” [anyone who was not a Communist], and to establish their own rule, without the involvement of the Red Army. Any notion of the Soviet Army withdrawing from Poland is therefore fundamentally unsound. (p. 13).

STALINISTS, AND THEIR NEO-STALINIST PROTEGES

Throughout the decades of Communist-ruled Poland, the anti-Communist Underground has been slandered as criminal in nature, and such caricatures have found their way into innumerable books and encyclopedias [Not to mention the left-wing GAZETA WYBORCZA, funded by George Soros]. The likes of Krystyna Kersten and Jacek Kuron would have us believe that there really was no difference between the NSZ and the U. B. (Bezpieka) or Wehrmacht. (p. 12). [More recently, the aptly-named neo-Stalinist authors, such as Jan T. Gross, have revived these Stalinist-era smears against Polish patriotism.]

A POLISH PATRIOTIC BROCHURE

The authors reprint a Polish Underground brochure from 1951. (pp. 138-139). It is instructive, and I summarize its content.

The USSR is no friend of Poland. The 1939 conquest of Poland had been a joint Nazi-Communist project. Then came the mass deportations of Poles into the USSR and the Katyn massacre. The Soviets and Poles were placed on the same side only because Nazi Germany attacked her erstwhile Soviet ally. Then came the Soviet betrayal of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. The latter enabled the Germans to systematically destroy Warsaw at leisure.

Now Poland is under Soviet occupation and totalitarian rule. Poland is a colony. The law is whatever the Soviets and their Polish satraps (e. g, Boleslaw Bierut) say that it is. The only source of morality is the will of the Communist Party, and the Polish people have been reduced to a herd of obedient sheep. [Sheeple, in modern terminology.]

The 1947 “elections” were a joke. The Communist declaration of February 22, 1947 spoke of basic freedoms. These are farces. There is not a single legal newspaper in Poland that is outside of the approval of the Communist authorities. The only freedom of assembly is that sponsored by the Communists. Tens of thousands of Poles have been imprisoned, and many thousands murdered by the U. B. (Bezpieka), merely for having an opinion that differs from that of the Kremlin, and for wanting their own nation. The slightest criticism of the present system can cause death or lengthy imprisonment. Some freedom of speech!

The Soviet system is an affront to personal conscience, and spares not the family, nor the schools, nor the Church. The vile contempt that Communism has for Polish patriotism, and for religion, needs no elaboration. The educational system has been perverted to a tool for the Sovietization of Polish youth, for the promotion of falsehoods in general and contempt for Poland’ s history in particular. [Reader: Does this sound similar to today’s cultural Marxist educational system in Poland?]

Communism professes to be the champion of the working class, yet will not allow workers to strike. The worker fully knows that he had many more rights and freedoms under Poland’s pre-WWII system than he now has under Communism.

The means of production has been nationalized. The old private capitalism has now been replaced a hundred times more inhuman and destructive state capitalism.

What about agrarian reform? The Soviet collective farm system (kolkhoz) is a new form of serfdom. [The peasant is deprived of land ownership. He instead must work for the owner of the land. It does not matter if the owner is a noble, or if it is the government.]

The time of the Roman emperors have passed. The reign of the Okhrana and the Gestapo is over. One day, the Bezpieka (U. B.) and the NKVD will pass into history. Poland will be free again!

THE EXPERIENCES OF POLISH UNDERGROUND SOLDIERS

The extensive biographical nature of this book allows for insights into life as a Polish guerrilla. It is sad to read the hundreds of biographies, complete with photos, and learn that the vast majority of these heroes died in combat or were brutally murdered by the Communists.

Some of the personal details are especially interesting. For instance, Walerian Tumanowicz “Jagodzinski” identified himself as Armenian blood and Polish conviction and soul. He spoke of imbibing hatred for the Soviet Union with his mother’s milk. (p. 68).

Another guerrilla is a long-term personal acquaintance. Captain Maria Mirecki “Marta” is featured along with a 1943 photograph. (p. 151). [I have known her, as Maria Mirecka Lorys, since childhood. She is alive, aged 103].

Quite a few of these soldiers committing suicide when their bunkers were surrounded the U. B. (Bezpieka). This was because they realized that falling into Communists only meant that they will face torture and death, and because they feared that they may break down under torture and divulge the identities of their colleagues. (p. 157). In addition, the Communists sometimes succeeded into turning captured guerrillas into informers in exchange for sparing their lives. (p. 171).

THE WiN AND THE NSZ

The WiN (WOLNOSCI i NIEZAWISLOSC) was active in 1945-1946 before attempting to transform itself into a civilian conspiratorial organization. The main WiN operatives were in the areas of Bialystok, Lublin, and the eastern parts of Warsaw province. (p. 70).

During the German occupation, part of the NSZ (NARODOWE SILY ZBROJNE) joined with the AK, and part did not. Much of the NSZ was technically the NSZ-ONR, reflecting the background of the personnel.

COMMUNIST DISINFORMATION TACTICS

During the German occupation, the Communist GL-AL bands would engage in banditry, and leave behind NSZ identification so that the NSZ would falsely be blamed for these crimes. The postwar MO and UB continued these tactics, attributing Communist murders to the NSZ. (p. 240). In fact, the Communist agent provocateurs (the “bandy pozorowane” , called the “Brygady Realizacyjny” in UB terminology) systematically committed crimes against Poles [and Jews] and then blamed them on the “fascists” and “reactionaries” . [Standard leftspeak for non-leftists]. (pp. 337-339). Ironically to these slurs, the NSZ was active in defending the Polish people from banditry. (e. g, p. 286).

The authors do not discuss the disproportionate Jewish complicity in the Communist subjugation of Poland. However, consider the following. A Communist provocation led to the disarming of Captain “Bartek’s” NSZ unit, near Lambinowice, in September 1946. The Communist forces then systematically murdered 200 of them in cold blood. Decades later, the trial of the murderers, in 1993-1994, went nowhere, because the remaining UB personnel “could not remember what happened”. In addition, two of the U. B. commanders were deceased, while two other U. B. commanders, the Jews Jozef Kratko and Marian Fink, had moved to Israel. (p. 245).

A standard Stalinist tactic [since copied by the neo-Stalinists] was [and is] to accuse anti-Communist Poles of being anti-Semites and killers of Jews. [This charge has been repeated in countless Jewish memoirs. I know. I have reviewed many of them]. One notable example of this was the calumnies, by U. B.  propagandist Wladyslaw Machejka, falsely accusing independent Polish guerrilla leader Jozef Kuras “Ogien” of being an anti-Semitic murderer of Jews. (pp. 290-291).

SOME NOTABLE BATTLES

Authors Wasowski and Zebrowski describe the heroics of Major Hieronim Dekutowski “Zapora” . He was involved in the Kedyw, and led about 200 guerrillas in 50 acts of combat against the Germans in the Zamosc region. He then continued his war against the new Soviet occupants of Poland. He was in WiN, and waged often successful combat against the NKVD and UB before his capture, torture, and execution the Communists in 1947. (pp. 95-96).

Now consider the battle at Kurylowka. (p. 178). The authors reckon it one of the largest anti-Communist battles by the Polish Underground. It took place in the spring of 1945. Several hundred NKVD personnel were involved. The Polish freedom fighters won a complete victory, leaving at least 56 NKVD men dead. In reprisal, the NKVD returned, and, emulating Nazi German methods, burned the village to the ground, murdering several civilians. Some 200 farmsteads went up in flames.

THE POLISH UNDERGROUND IN THE NORTHERN KRESY

One notable feature of this book is its attention to the Polish anti-Communist resistance in the Kresy (Poland’s eastern half), which astonishingly persisted for so many years after these lands had been given away to the Soviet Union as part of the Churchill-Roosevelt betrayal of Poland at Teheran in 1943 and Yalta in 1945.

The ARMIA KRAJOWA (A. K.) of the Wilno (Vilnius) region, and its successor guerrilla organizations, held out, according to Soviet documents, until 1952. (p. 29). Earlier, part of it had moved into Poland as defined her post-Yalta boundaries. (p. 259). The Polish guerrillas that remained in the Wilno area included Lithuanians and deserters from the Red Army-even from Kazakhstan. (pp. 27-29).

The A. K. (ARMIA KRAJOWA) was active in the Nowogrodek region (Nowogrodczyzna) until 1953. As with the A. K. from the Wilno region, part of the units had transferred to Poland beyond the Curzon line. The remainder stayed in the region and fought against the NKVD. (pp. 44-45).