Paying tribute
ON 400 billboards across the country last week, Poles were presented with a question they hadn't considered in years: "Would you give your life for your country?"
After a few days, the posters were replaced by ads for "Heroes of Our Freedom," a photographic exhibit that opened on Saturday, Independence Day, at Warsaw's Royal Castle. The exhibition, which runs until Nov. 30, includes pictures and biographies of soldiers who fought against the Nazis and the Soviets during and after World War II.
Dariusz Karlowicz, historian of philosophy and marketing director at German insurer Allianz, is behind the ad campaign and exhibition, whose official patron was the Culture and National Heritage Ministry. "World War II veterans approached us saying, 'Do something with us before we die.'" According to Karlowicz, former soldiers, many of whom had been prisoners in Soviet labor camps and Nazi concentration camps, feel it's their duty to testify to what their generation went through. "It took us a long time, however, to get them to agree to the title of the exhibition," Karlowicz said. "They don't want to be treated as heroes."
Poland's secret armed forces, the Armia Krajowa (AK), which continued to struggle after the defeat in September 1939, was a banned subject under communism. "We have to above all remember, because without memory there is no history," said Eleonora Smolarska, whose wartime biography is included in the exhibition. "Without memory nothing remains."
Miroslaw Spiechowicz, whose biography is also featured, was 16 when World War II started and joined the AK in 1941. The army was one element of an underground state that comprised a court, educational system, welfare organization and intelligence service. The state was run by Delegatura, the shadow government of the London-based Polish government in exile (PGE), which had been formed after the German and Soviet occupation of Poland.
After completing his training, Spiechowicz joined the AK's diversionary unit. The AK was organized as a real army with a general staff, professional officers and an intelligence service. In 1944 the army numbered 250,000-350,000 men, including more than 10,000 officers.
Spiechowicz was sent to join the AK's infantry division, the 30 Poleska Dywizja Piechoty. He fought with that division until Soviet armed forces and the NKWD (Soviet secret service) surrounded it in 1944, at which point the NKWD was already busy putting the communist regime into power. Polish soldiers were disarmed and some were sent to Riazan, a special NKWD camp for Polish officers. Spiechowicz, however, was imprisoned in Majdanek, where he managed to escape with 20 others after four days. "Some of the prisoners who didn't escape were sent to the Borowicze internment camp, near Leningrad," he said. "They returned to Poland only after four years."
Spiechowicz was later sent as a courier to Frankfurt, from where he managed to reach the Polish army in the West. In 1947 he returned home. "I decided to come back because I had a mother and brother in Poland, and you don't leave your country," he said.
The decision to return to Poland was a tough one. The new communist regime was alien to the majority of society. Thousands of former AK soldiers were subjected to heavy repression, starting with arrest and subsequent deportation to the Soviet Union. The prisoners' fates varied; some died without trial. "Even with so many problems, somehow I managed to graduate from a university, but that's all in the past now," Spiechowicz said. "I think that the current young generation is no different from my generation. I am sure that if they had to, they would act the same way we did."
