2017-02-25 18:34 update: 2018-09-26, 23:55
Uroczystości upamiętniające udział polskich żołnierzy z 1. Dywizji Pancernej generała Stanisława Maczka w bitwie z Niemcami na wzgórzu Mont Ormel w Normandii w sierpniu 1944 roku. Fot. PAP/Rafał Guz
A Mass and a wreath laying at a monument commemorating General Stanislaw Maczek's Polish 1st Armoured Division in Warsaw on Saturday marked the 75th anniversary of the division formation in Duns, Scotland.
The division, formed 75 years ago today, later proved instrumental in the Allied action to liberate France and Holland.
"They were fighting for an independent Poland and for a Europe of values. They were fighting against the German Third Reich which trampled on the world of values building Europe for two thousand years. They were on the side of good, on the side of the most beautiful gift which Divine Providence could give people and nations, namely independence", acting head of the Office for War Veterans and Victims of Oppression Jan Kasprzyk said.
"The Polish 1st Armoured Division is a symbol of the Polish people's great contribution to World War Two battles. We have to remember those for whom the struggle for the Homeland's freedom was the highest order. (...) We know that these soldiers had to wait long for a just evaluation of their merits. Today, on the 75th anniversary of the division's formation, we should stress that thanks to these heroes we could live in an independent Poland", reads a letter from PM Beata Szydlo read out by Secretary of State at the PM's Office Anna Maria Anders, the daughter of General Wladyslaw Anders, commander of the Polish Second Corps in Italy where his soldiers were indispensable in winning the famous Battle of Monte Cassino which enabled Allied forced to proceed to Rome and conquer Italy.
Flowers were laid at the monument commemorating General Stanislaw Maczek's Polish 1st Armoured Division and its soldiers fallen on the battlefields of Poland, France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. "The Polish soldiers fights for freedom of other nations but dies only for Poland", reads an inscription on the monument.
Stanislaw Maczek is reputed to be a soldier and commander to have never lost a battle. Drafted into the Austrian army at the outbreak of World War I, soon after graduating from the university in Lviv, he fought on the Russian front in the Carpathian Mountains and on the Italian front in the Alps. He joined the Polish Army immediately after Poland regained its independence in 1918. He was already a major by 1920 when assigned the command of an assault battalion during the defence of Lviv in the war against Soviet Russia.
Next, after completing his studies in a military academy in Poland, he formed the Polish Army's first armoured brigade which fought against the 13th Panzer Division in the opening days of World War II. Interned in Hungary, he fled to France and after its capitulation in 1940 to Britain where as major general he was named commander of an armoured brigade and in 1942 of the 1st Armoured Division of the Polish Army.
The Division took part in the Allied invasion of Normandy and played an instrumental role in the battle of Falaise by circling the 7th (Wermacht) Army and 5th Panzer Army, and in liberating the Dutch town of Breda as well as capturing the German town of Wilhelmshaven. General Maczek himself accepted surrender acts form Wilhelmshaven Kriegsmarine base command, Ostfrisland fleet, 10 infantry divisions, 8 infantry regiments and the artillery.
In the course of Belgian town Ypres recapturing by General Maczek's division, he noted in his log: "The history is looking upon us not only from the hights of this medieval city walls(...) but also from thousands of crosses dug into the Allies' cementeries after the previous war that we pass on our way (...) Today the tactics of the speed prevail"
Other famous quote by Maczek is "fight hard but knightly" which words he said to his soldiers during the Allied invasion of Germany in 1945.
In 1945 General Maczek was awarded the French Legion of Honour and until demoblilization commanded Polish troops in UK. Soon after Gen. Maczek was devoided of Polish citizenship by communists and forced to stay in England, where refused a military pension, worked as a bartender at an Edinburgh hotel until late 1960s. In 1971 he regained Polish citizenship.
He was promoted to the rank of a Polish three-star general in 1990. In 1992 received the highest civilian order in Poland, the Order of the White Eagle. At the request of 40,000 inhabitants of Breda who signed a petition, General Maczek received Dutch honorary citizenship.
General Maczek died in 1994 at the age of 102 (in Edinburgh). According to his last wish, he was laid to rest among his soldiers at the Polish military cemetery in Breda, the Netherlands. (PAP)
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