2017-02-08 21:26 update: 2018-09-27, 00:06
Zygmunt Szendzielarz Fot. IPN
On February 8, 1951, Poland's communist authorities executed the Polish legendary commander of Home Army 5th Wilno Brigade, Major Zygmunt Szendzielarz, codenamed Lupaszka, who had been sentenced to death by a communist court.
Zygmunt Szendzielarz was born on March 12, 1910. In 1931 he entered a military school and completed his course the following year. He continued his training at another military school which he completed with the rank of a second lieutenant and was assigned to the 4th Regiment of Niemen Uhlans, a cavalry unit, in which he fought in Poland's defensive war of 1939.
He received the Virtuti Militari Cross of the 5th class for his role in the campaign.
In late September 1939, he was taken prisoner by the Soviets, but after a few days in captivity he managed to escape. Since early 1940 he was active in the underground, acquiring the codename of Lupaszka.
Since November 1943, Szendzielarz headed the Home Army 5th Wilno Brigade which he set up from soldiers who had survived a Soviet attack. His unit fought with German troops and the Nazi-collaborating Lithuanian units, and with hostile Soviet partisans.
On July 23, 1944, the brigade was partly disarmed by the Red Army, but some soldiers managed to escape and formed a new unit under Szendzielarz's command.
In November 1944 he was promoted to major. The reconstructed 5th Brigade that consisted of some 250 men started operations in the spring of 1945 and fought against Soviet and Polish communist police, secret police and internal security service. In September 1945, Szendzielarz was ordered by his superiors to disband the brigade.
He later joined an underground unit in north Poland and in 1946 started subversive activities. In April he recreated the 5th Wilno Brigade, comprising some 70 men, under his command.
In March 1947 he left the underground and went into hiding. On 30 June 1948 he was arrested by the communists in the south-Polish village of Osielec.
During the investigation that lasted for two and a half years he accepted full responsibility for the activities of the units under his command. On November 2, 1950, he was sentenced to death by a military court in Warsaw. The sentence was carried out in a Warsaw prison on February 8, 1951.
On his 55th death anniversary, the Polish Sejm, the lower chamber of parliament, honoured Major Zygmunt Szendzielarz with a commemorative resolution, praising him as "a symbol of unwavering struggle for Independent Poland".
Major Szendzielarz'a burial site was unknown for years. His remains were found in 2013 at the so called Laczka (little lawn) at Warsaw's Powazki Military cemetery where around 300 anti-communist fighters were buried secretly after most of them had been shot in the head in a Warsaw prison from 1946 to 1955. Their bodies were dumped in unmarked pits in the ground. Some of those mass graves have not been found until today. The remains of over 200 victims buried at Laczka have already been exhumed and 35 have been identified. Szendzielarz was posthumously promoted to colonel and buried with full military honours in the Powazki Military Cemetery in 2016.
The Home Army was one of the largest and best organised resistance movements in Europe, with the total number of fighters put at 200,000 to 600,000. In his book God's Playground. A History of Poland, prominent historian Norman Davies said that "the Home Army could fairly claim to be the largest of European resistance [organisations]". (PAP)
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