Joanna Roman

​​Tadeusz Bieńkowicz was a member of the resistance and took part in one of the largest actions to free prisoners in occupied Poland. Tadeusz fought against the German occupation and later also against the Communist regime. ​ 

​​Tadeusz Bieńkowicz was born on 19 April 1923 in Lida. When the Second World War began he volunteered for service and was given a job at an air observation post. When the Soviet occupation began, he joined the resistance movement and in 1943 he became a soldier in the Home Army.  

​He became a soldier of diversion unit which attacked German strategic infrastructure. He was promoted to platoon commander in the 2^nd Battalion of the 77^th Infantry Regiment of the Home Army. Tadeusz fought in the eastern borderlands of Poland, where the Polish resistance movement fought both against the German forces, as well as against the communists. 

​In the autumn of 1943, the intelligence of the Home Army learned that about 70 members of the resistance were being held in the prison in Lida. The commanders decided to capture the prison and free the detainees. At that time, Lida was an important transport hub for the German forces. There was a garrison of about 10,000 German soldiers and policemen in the city, making this a very risky operation.  

​The commanders of the Home Army in this area ordered a small detachment of the best-trained soldiers to disguise themselves. These men managed to trick the guards and succeeded in capturing the prison. The action took place on the night of 18/19 January 1944. Resistance members were freed, leaving criminal prisoners.  

​During the action, Home Army soldiers discovered that among the prison staff there was a Russian wanted by the resistance movement for crimes he had committed against the local civilian population. Tadeusz Bieńkowicz killed the person in question for his crimes.   

​The action was successful. The people were freed without firing a shot. The German city garrison was not warned and did not react. Tadeusz Bieńkowicz was decorated with the Virtuti Militari, Poland’s highest military decoration for this action.  

​Tadeusz Bieńkowicz remained a member of the resistance after the war. He decided to fight against the communist regime. He was arrested in 1950 and after a few years he was released from prison. 

​In the 1990’s Tadeusz was rehabilitated by the Polish government and in 2018 the was promoted to honorary general. Tadeusz passed away on 13 December 2019.

​​Stanisław Kolasiński was a soldier of the Polish Army. After the Polish defeat in 1939 he went to France to join the Polish forces there. From France he moved to England where he received parachute training. In 1943 he returned to Poland as a Home Army commando.

​​Stanisław was born on 16 November 1916. He served with the Polish army and was wounded during the fighting in September 1939. Stanisław escaped from the hospital and then made his way to France to join the Polish forces there. As an officer of the 3^rd Infantry Division, he took part in the defense of France.  

​After the defeat of France, Stanisław evacuated to Great Britan where he was given command of a platoon of the 5^th company of the 1^st rifle brigade. However, in September 1942, he volunteered for service in occupied Poland and was then sent to training to join the Cichociemni (The Silent Unseen): elite special operations paratroopers. The training was very demanding. Out of over 2,400 candidates, only a quarter were able to complete it. 

​Stanisław took the Home Army soldiers’ oath and on the night of 13 on 14 March 1943, he jumped into Poland. He was assigned to the subversion unit in Lwów. He took part in sabotage actions, liquidation of traitors and military actions against the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. This formation was a paramilitary and partisan organization founded in 1942 which fought against Soviet Army, Polish Underground State and Third Reich for an independent and nationalist Ukraine. Ukrainian Insurgent Soldiers were involved in massacres of polish civilians in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in 1943-44.  

​During Operation Tempest Stanisław was a company commander of the 19^th Infantry Regiment of the Home Army. He was caught in a raid where the Germans arrested all the men in the village and sent them to camps in the heart of Germany. Stanisław was assigned to the Todt Organization near Hamburg and hadto perform forced labour. However, at the turn of April and May 1945, he escaped from the camp and made his way through the front line to the British positions. 

​After the war, he could not return to Poland. He worked as an upholsterer, and in 1951 he moved to West Germany. He worked officially as a store manager, but also worked for the CIA as a training manager in Munich and Haidelberg. Paratroopers were trained, who were to be directed to communist Poland, just as the “Silent Unseen” were directed during World War II. 

​He died on 19 November 1996, 8 days after he permanently returned to Poland.​ 

​​Jadwiga Podrygałło took part in the defense of Warsaw in 1939. After the occupation she joined the resistance movement, helping Polish prisoners of war to escape from captivity. During the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, she served as a nurse and liaison officer.​ 

​​Jadwiga Podrygałło was born in Warsaw in 1919. Before the war, she was a girl scout and then joined the Female Military Training. Furthermore, she was taught to shoot by her father.  

​Jadwiga became the commander of the anti-aircraft defense of the tenement house where she lived after the German attack on Poland in 1939. During the siege of Warsaw, Jadwiga helped in medical points and care centers for infants and small children. 

​After the fall of Warsaw on September 27, she joined the resistance. She helped organize escapes for Polish soldiers from the hospital, which was treated by Germans as a POW camp. Later, she organized housing for the needs of the resistance. Then she became a soldier of the “Dysk” – the unit of Women’s Diversion and Sabotage. “Dysk” dealt with blowing up railway tracks, bridges, viaducts and other strategically important objects for the Germans. Women from the unit also executed traitors and gestapo agents.  

​When the Warsaw Uprising began, Jadwiga could not reach her unit. Nobody knew her there, so they didn’t believe that she had undergone combat training. Jadwiga was short, of very slight build and could be taken for a child. That’s why she was sent to the back of the fighting. Finally, she ended up in a branch of the Home Army Group “Kryska”. She adopted the nickname “Cub”. 

​Jadwiga fought in the “Czerniaków” district, where a unit of several hundred Slovaks also fought on the side of the Home Army at that time. Jadwiga became a liaison officer with the Slovak forces. She was often sent with orders or to reconnoitre the area. Jadwiga had to run through the streets of ruined Warsaw under fire from the enemy.  

​After the capitulation of the Warsaw Uprising, Jadwiga evacuated with civilians from the city. However, she escaped from the German transport and came to Kielce. She engaged in clandestine teaching as a history teacher. There she married Stanisław, who was a delegate of the government-in-exile in Kielce. Both she and her husband were persecuted by the communists. Jadwiga died in 2015.​ 

​​Henryk Kosior fought in Polish Army in September 1939. During the Soviet occupation, he joined the resistance. He was arrested and deported to the Soviet Union. He joined the Polish army that left the USSR and took part in the liberation of Africa and Italy.  

​​Henryk Kosior was born on 11 May 1920. He was sent to the armored weapons school in Przemyśl before the war. After the invasion of Poland by the Third Reich and the Soviet Union in 1939, he fought against the Red Army. Henryk was taken prisoner. At the time captured Polish officers were often murdered after being captured for instance during the infamous Katyn massacre. Fortunately, non-commissioned officers such as Henryk were released quite quickly.  

​At the age of 19, Henryk began serving in the Polish resistance movement. He worked undercover in a transport company in Lviv, and his job was to obtain weapons for the resistance.  

​Henryk’s colleague at work saw that he had a gun and therefore reported him to the NKVD (Soviet secret police). Henryk was sentenced to 5 years of hard labor near Leningrad. He managed to escape but was caught by guards on the border with Finland and sent to Kharkov, where he was given an additional sentence of 10 years in labor camp in Vorkuta. 

​After the restoration of diplomatic relations between Poland and the Soviet Union, most Polish prisoners were released to form the Polish army in the USSR. It was a great exodus of refugees who were fleeing the hell of the Soviet labor camps. Henryk joined the newly formed army but his health was in disastrous condition and he spent nearly a year in field hospitals. 

​After some time, the Polish Armed Forces evacuated from the USSR. Henryk Kosior also left the Soviet Union as a soldier of the 23^rd Transport Company of the Polish Armed Forces in the East. Poles were sent to the front in Italy. Henryk, as a platoon commander, delivered ammunition to the front line. He took part in the Battle of Monte Cassino, and the liberation of Ancona and Bologna.  

​Immediately after the war, he was an instructor at a transport school in Italy, and then returned to Poland. He was persecuted by the communists and decided to emigrate to Germany. He died on 7 March 2020.​ 

​​Danuta Siedzikówna joined the Home Army when she was 15 years old and served as nurse. After the war, when the communists came to power, she was unjustly accused of conspiring against the government and sentenced to death.​ 

​​Danuta Siedzikówna was born in small village near to Białowieża Forest in 1928. When the Second World War broke out, the area where Danuta lived was occupied by the Soviets. Her father was arrested and exiled deep into the Soviet Union. Danuta’s mother was a soldier of the Home Army. After the Nazis occupied eastern Poland, she was arrested by the Gestapo and executed in a forest near Białystok in 1943.

​In December 1943, Danuta and her sister Wiesława swore an oath to the Home Army and formally joined the resistance. She was sent to a sanitary course to be trained as a nurse and was given the nickname ‘’Inka’’. 

​The resistance movement units in the area Danuta operated in took an active part in the “Tempest” operation, the purpose of which was to fight with the Red Army against the Nazis. The Soviets introduced terror in the “liberated” territory and began to install subordinate authorities. Some units of the Home Army decided to fight against the Soviets. One of them was the 5^th Vilnius Home Army Brigade commanded by Major Zygmunt Szendzielarz.  

​In June 1944, “Inka” was arrested by the NKVD for her cooperation with the Polish resistance movement. She was saved from prison, and probably from death, by the soldiers of the 5^th Brigade, who freed her from captivity. From that moment she had to hide from the communists. She changed her name but remained in the brigade as a nurse and liaison. She served in the unit of second lieutenant Zdzisław Badoch. 

​In June 1946, she went to Gdańsk to get medical supplies for the unit. She was arrested on 20 July and sent to prison where she was tortured for information. She was accused of participating in a plot to overthrow the government. Although she was a nurse, she was accused of murdering militiamen and security corps soldiers. Communist propaganda in the press called her the “bloody Inka”. 

​Less than two weeks later, on 3 August, a communist court sentenced her to death. On 28 August, she faced a firing squad, but none of the soldiers wanted to kill her. Although they were standing a few steps away from her, Inka was only wounded. At. 06.15, the platoon commander killed Inka with a shot to the head.  

​The location of Danuta’s remains was unknown for many years until her grave was found in 2015.