The Polish Resistance

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  1. On November 9, 1939, the two soldiers of Polish army Witold Pilecki and Major Jan Włodarkiewicz founded the Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska, TAP), one of the first underground organizations in Poland after defeat.Pilecki became its organizational commander as TAP expanded to cover not only Warsaw but Siedlce, Radom, Lublin and other major cities of central Poland
  2. Pilecki became its organizational commander as TAP expanded
  3. By 1940, TAP had approximately 8,000 men (more than half of them armed)
1940
  1. In March 1940, a partisan unit of the first guerrilla commanders in the Second World War in Europe under Major  Henryk Dobrzanski "Hubal"completely destroyed a battalion of German infantry in a skirmish near the village of huciska. A few days later in an ambush near the village of Szalasy it inflicted heavy casualties upon another German unit.
  2. To counter this threat the German authorities formed a special 1,000 men strong anti-partisan unit of combined SS-Wehrmacht forces, including a Panzer group.
  3. In 1940, Witold Pilecki , a member of the Polish resistance, presented to his superiors a plan to enter Germany's Auschwitz concentration camp, gather intelligence on the camp from the inside, and organize inmate resistance. The Home Army approved this plan, provided him a false identity card, and on September 19, 1940, he deliberately went out during a street roundup in Warsaw -lapanka, and was caught by the Germans along with other civilians and sent to Auschwitz. In the camp he organized the underground organization - Zwiazek Organizacji Wajoskowej - ZOW.                                           
  4.  On the end of 1940 Aleksander Kaminski created Polish youth resistance organization - "Wawer". It was part of the Szare Szeregi (the underground Polish Scouting Association). Organisation provided many Minor sabotage operations in occupied Poland and its first action was series of graffiti in Warsaw around the Christmas Eve of 1940, commemorating the Wawer massacre.
         1941
  1. From April 1941 the Bureau of Information and Propaganda of the Union for Armed Struggle started Operation N headed by Tadeusz Żenczykowski. It involved sabotage, subversion and black-propaganda activities.
  2. From March 1941, Witold Pilecki's reports were forwarded to the Polish government in exile and through it, to the British and other Allied governments. These reports informed the Allies about the Holocaust and were the principal source of intelligence on Auschwitz-Birkenau for the Western Allies.
  3. In July 1941 Mieczysław Słowikowski (using the codename "Rygor" — Polish for "Rigor") set up "Agency Africa," one of World War II's most successful intelligence organizations.The information gathered by the Agency was used by the Americans and British in planning the amphibious November 1942 Operation Torchlandings in North Africa. These were the first large-scale Allied landings of the war, and their success in turn paved the way for the Allies' Italian campaign.

         1942
  1. in 20 June 1942 took place the most spectacular escape from Auschwitz concentration camp. Ukrainian Eugeniusz Bendera and three Poles, Kazimierz Piechowski, Stanisław Gustaw Jaster and Józef Lempart made a daring escape. The escapees were dressed as members of the SS-Totenkopfverbände, fully armed and in an SS staff car. They drove out the main gate in a stolen Rudolf Hoss automobile Steyr 220 with a smuggled report from Witold Pilecki about the Holocaust. The Germans never recaptured any of them.
  2. In September 1942 "The Council to Aid Jews Żegota" was founded by Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz ("Alinka") and made up of Polish Democrat as well as other Catholic activists. Poland was the only country in occupied Europe where there existed such a dedicated secret organization.(Half of the Jews who survived the war (thus over 50,000) were aided in some shape or form by Żegota)
  3. The Zamość Uprising was an armed uprising of Armia Krajowa and Bataliony Chłopskie against the forced expulsion of Poles from the Zamość region under the NaziGeneralplan Ost.Germans attempting to remove the local Poles from the Greater Zamość area (through forced removal, transfer to forced labor camps, or, in some cases, mass murder) to get it ready for German colonization. It lasted from 1942 until 1944 and despite heavy casualties suffered by the Underground, the Germans failed.
  4. On the night from 7 to 8 October 1942 Operation Wieniec started. It targeted rail infrastructure near Warsaw. Similar operations aimed at disrupting German transport and communication in occupied Poland occurred in the coming months and years.
        1943
  1. In early 1943 two Polish slave janitors of Peenemünde's Camp Trassenheide provided maps, sketches and reports to Polish Home Army Intelligence, and in June 1943 British intelligence had received two such reports which identified the "rocket assembly hall', 'experimental pit', and 'launching tower'. When reconnaissance and intelligence information regarding the V-2 rocket became convincing, the War Cabinet Defence Committee (Operations) directed the campaign's first planned raid (the Operation Hydra bombing of Peenemünde in August 1943) and Operation Crossbow.
  2. On March 26, 1943 in Warsaw Operation Arsenal was launched by the Szare Szeregi (Gray Ranks) Polish Underground The successful operation led to the release of arrested troop leader Jan Bytnar "Rudy". In an attack on the prison van Bytnar and 24 other prisoners were freed.
  3. In 1943 in London Jan Karski met the then much known journalist Arthur Koestler. He then traveled to the United States and reported to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. His report was a major factor in informing the West.
  4. Many of those he spoke to did not believe him, or supposed that his testimony was much exaggerated or was propaganda from the Polish government in exile.
  5. In April 1943 the Germans began deporting the remaining Jews from the Warsaw ghetto provoking the Warsaw Ghetto Rising, April 19 to May 16. Some units of the AK tried to assist the Ghetto rising, but for the most part the resistance was unprepared and unable to defeat the Germans.
  6. n August 1943 the headquarters of the Armia Krajowa ordered Operation Belt who was one of the large-scale anti-Nazi operations of the AK during the war. By February 1944, 13 German outposts were destroyed with few losses on the Polish side.
  7. Operation Headsstarted - action of the serial assassinations Nazi personnel sentenced to death by the Special Courts for crimes against Polish citizens in occupied Poland.
  8. On September 7, 1943, the Home Army killed Franz Bürkl during Operation Bürkl. Bürkl was a high-ranking Gestapo agent responsible for the murder and brutal interrogation of thousands of Polish Jews and resistance fighters and supporters. In reprisal, 20 inmates of Pawiak were murdered in a public execution by the Nazis.
  9. From November 1943, Operation Most III started. The Armia Krajowa provided the Allies with crucial intelligence on the German V-2 rocket. In effect some 50 kg of the most important parts of the captured V-2, as well as the final report, analyses, sketches and photos, were transported to Brindisi by a Royal Air Force Douglas Dakota aircraft. In late July 1944, the V-2 parts were delivered to London.
         1944
  1.     On 11 February 1944 the Resistance fighters of Polish Home Army's unit Agat executed Franz Kutschera, SS and Reich's Police Chief in Warsaw in action known as Operation Kutschera. In a reprisal of this action 27 February 140 inmates of Pawiak - Poles and Jews were shot in a public execution by the Germans.
  2. May 13–May 14, 1944 the Battle of Murowana Oszmianka the largest clash between the Polish anti-Nazi Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK) and the Nazi Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force a Lithuanian volunteer security force subordinated to Nazi Germany.
  3. On June 14, 1944 took place Battle of Porytowe Wzgórzebetween Polish and Russian partisans, numbering around 3000, and the Nazi German units consisted of between 25000 to 30000 soldiers, with artillery, tanks and armored cars and air support.
  4. On 25–26 June 1944 the Battle of Osuchy - one of the largest battles between the Polish resistance and Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II, continuation of the Zamość Uprising.
  5. he plan of national anti nazi uprising on areas of prewar Poland was code-named Operation Tempest. Preparation began in late 1943 but military actions start in 1944. Its most widely known elements were Operation Ostra Brama, Lwów Uprisingand the Warsaw Uprising.
  6. On July 7 started Operation Ostra Brama Approximately 12,500 Home Army soldiers attacked the German garrison and managed to seize most of the city center.
  7. On July 23 started The Lwów Uprising the armed struggle started by the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) against the Nazi occupiers in Lwów, during World War II.
  8. In August 1944, as the Soviet armed forces approached Warsaw, the government in exile called for an uprising in the city, so that they could return to a liberated Warsaw and try to prevent a communist take-over. The AK, led by Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, launched the Warsaw Uprising
        1945
  1. In March 1945 staged trial of 16 leaders of the Polish Underground State held by the Soviet Union took place in Moscow - (Trial of the Sixteen).
  2. On May 5, 1945 in Bohemia Narodowe Siły Zbrojne brigade liberated prisoners from a Nazi concentration camp in Holiszowo, including 280 Jewish women prisoners.The brigade suffered heavy casualties.
  3. On May 21, 1945, a unit of the Home Army, led by Colonel Edward Wasilewski, attacked a NKVD camp located in Rembertów on the eastern outskirts of Warsaw. The Soviets kept there hundreds of Poles,members of the Home Army, whom they were systematically deporting to Siberia. However, this action of the pro-independence Polish resistance freed all Polish political prisoners from the camp.
  4. On May 7, 1945 in the village of Kuryłówka, southeastern Poland The Battle of Kuryłówka started. It was the biggest battle in the history of the Cursed soldiers organization - National Military Alliance (NZW).
  5. From June 10 up to June 25, 1945 Augustów chase 1945 (Polish Obława augustowska) took place. It was a big operation undertaken by Soviet forces of the Red Army, the NKVD and SMERSH, with the assistance of Polish UB and LWP units against former Armia Krajowa soldiers in Suwałki and Augustów region in Poland. The operation also covered territory in occupied Lithuania. More than 2,000 Polish alleged anticommunist fighters were captured and detained in Russian internment camps. 600 of the "Augustów Missing" are presumed dead and buried in an unknown location on the present territory of Russia. The Augustów Roundup was a part of an anti-guerilla operation in Lithuania.