POLISH EX-SERVICEMEN'S ASSOCIATION
SUB-BRANCH No.1 SYDNEY AUSTRALIA INCORPORATED
Sub-branch of the Polish Ex-Servicemen's Association in Australia Inc.
WHO WE ARE
This site is dedicated to the proud history of Poland, her Army traditions and to all those who have sacrificed much in fighting for the independence of Poland during WWII and past wars until 1989.
The Polish Ex-Servicemen’s Association Branch Australia is a part
of the Polish Ex-Servicemen’s
a non-profit organization whose Head Office resides in Great Britain.
Association world federation, and later referred as “The Association” or “SPK
in Australia”. The Association’s name
in Polish is “Stowarzyszenie Polskich Kombatantów w Australii” (SPK)
The SPK was established by Polish soldier migrants, who had fought on all the European battlefields of the Second World War. Men who’d been displaced, and then discouraged to return to their beloved homeland, due to the communist takeover of their country after the war. Men who had seen betrayal of their motherland by the Great Powers, which had relinquished control of Poland to Stalin in exchange for a Cold War.
1.03
CURSED SOLDIERS
Remembrance Day
The "accursed soldiers",
also known as "doomed soldiers", "accursed soldiers" or "damned soldiers"; Polish: (Żołnierze wyklęci) or "indomitable soldiers" is a term applied to a variety of Polish anti-Soviet or anti-communist Polish resistance movements formed in the later stages of World War II and its aftermath by some members of the Polish Underground State.
The clandestine organisations continued their armed struggle against the communist government of Poland well into the 1950s. The guerrilla warfare included an array of military attacks launched against the communist regime's prisons and state security offices, detention facilities for political prisoners and concentration camps that were set up across the country.
Most of the Polish anti-communist groups ceased to exist in the late 1940s or 1950s, as they were hunted down by agents of the Ministry of Public Security and Soviet NKVD assassination squads. However, the last known 'cursed soldier', Józef Franczak, was killed in an ambush as late as 1963, almost 20 years after the Soviet take-over of Poland.
With victory secured by the Allies on
18 May 1944,
the Battle of Monte Cassino,
one of the toughest and bloodiest battles of World War II, takes a special place in Polish history. The Memorial Museum of the 2nd Polish Corps of General Władysław Anders, to whom we owe this historic victory, has been open for visits since 2014 at the Polish military cemetery at Monte Cassino.
The Home Army (Polish: Armia Krajowa; Polish pronunciation: [ˈarmʲa kraˈjɔva], abbreviated AK) was the dominant Polish resistance movement in Poland, occupied by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance). Some authors stress the continuity using acronym ZWZ/AK (or ZWZ-AK). Over the next two years, it absorbed most other Polish underground forces. Its allegiance was to the Polish government-in-exile, and it constituted the armed wing of what became known as the "Polish Underground State".
Estimates of the Home Army's 1944 strength range between 200,000 and 600,000, the most commonly cited number being 400,000. This last number would make the Home Army not only the largest Polish underground resistance movement but one of the three largest in Europe during World War II. The Home Army was disbanded on 19 January 1945, after the Soviet Red Army had largely cleared Polish territory of German forces.
The Home Army sabotaged German operations such as transports headed for the Eastern Front in the Soviet Union. It also fought several full-scale battles against the Germans, particularly in 1943 and in Operation Tempest in 1944. The Home Army, tied down substantial German forces and destroyed much-needed German supplies.
The most widely known Home Army operation was the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. The partisans also defended Polish civilians against atrocities perpetrated by other military formations.
Because the Home Army was loyal to the Polish Government-in-Exile, the Soviet Union saw it as an obstacle to Communism in Poland. Consequently, over the course of the war, conflict grew between the Home Army and Soviet forces.
August 1st 1944. The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 — a heroic and tragic 63-day struggle to liberate World War II Warsaw from Nazi/German occupation. Undertaken by the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK), the Polish resistance movement, at the time Allied troops were breaking through the Normandy defenses and the Red Army was standing at the line of the Vistula River.
Warsaw could have been one of the first European capitals liberated; however, various military and political miscalculations, as well as global politics — played among Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) — turned the dice against it.
80 anniversary
WE WILL NEVER FORGET
