They are accused of abuse, murder and acts of banditry. However, not every cursed soldier deserves condemnation. These three are true heroes. The kind that cannot be said one bad word about.
Enemy number one. Major Marian Bernaciak ps. Orlik
Before the Second World War began, Marian Bernaciak managed to graduate from high school and complete one year of compulsory military service. He also worked at the post office. He fought in the September Campaign, and then, when he was captured by the Soviets, he fled and returned to his homeland. In 1940 he became involved in the underground as a member of the Union of Armed Struggle, and then of the Home Army.
In 1943, he was already burnt and he had to become one of the "foresters", organizing a detachment of similar people from the underground, for whom the only option was to disappear. In 1944, he disbanded his unit, but in March of the following year he gathered partisans again. He wanted to go to the aid of fighting Warsaw, but he failed to get through.
Barely a month after the reorganization of the "Orlik" unit and its people, they carried out a truly daring action to free people detained in the district security office in Puławy. The building was not easy to break through. As Joanna Wieliczka-Szarkowa writes in the book Żołnierze Wyklęci. Steadfast Heroes ":
He was a real fortress, heavily guarded, surrounded by a barbed wire fence. Not only was the NKVD stationed in the city, but also a strong garrison of the Soviet army with artillery.
Orlik on a horse (photo:public domain)
Four soldiers from Bernaciak's unit in Russian uniforms pretended to be an operational group from Warsaw carrying captured "bandits". Thanks to a quick action, they freed 107 prisoners and fooled the Soviets, pretending that the chase was really AK disguises, and the Russians started shooting at the security service. After this event, the communist authorities began to track down "Orlik" and his people - Bernaciak became enemy number one.
The partisan commander held his men with an iron fist - there was no room for any robbery, theft or drunkenness. "Orlik" was not joking - the punishment for such offenses was flogging the first time. If the victim was not wise, he could be sentenced to death. At the same time, he did not waste the lives of his subordinates unnecessarily. He strictly followed the rules of the underground. As a result, the "Orlik" unit was elusive, to such an extent that forces numbering thousands of communist officials were directed to capture it. His parents and brother were arrested.
The commander of the partisan grouping and the underground structures of the Puławy AK-Freedom and Independence Inspectorate, one of the best organized in the Lublin District, was killed by one horse's horseshoe. On June 26, 1946, when he was returning in a cart along with a briefing from the staff of the WiN inspectorate, the horse lost a horseshoe. When the partisans joined the blacksmith to shoe him, the village leader informed the authorities about it. The hunt for "Orlik" was organized by security officers and soldiers. Bernaciak, injured in his leg and arm, had no chance of escaping. Before his death, he managed to burn the documents he had with him so that they would not fall into the hands of the Soviets.
The article was inspired by the book by Anna Śnieżko, "Żona Wyklęta" (Znak Horyzont 2018).
. The cursed leftist? Stanisław Sojczyński pseudonym Warszyc
Stanisław Sojczyński pseudonym From the point of view of today's right, Warszyc is an uncomfortable hero. On the one hand, no one can deny him the status of an accursed soldier. On the other hand, if he were alive today, he would probably be hailed as a leftist. Stanisław Sojczyński came from an ordinary peasantry and was distinguished from his subordinates mainly by the fact that he was educated (he graduated from school and became a teacher).
Before the war, he served in the Polish Army and took part in the September campaign. He was captured by the Russians. The only thing that saved him from sharing the fate of the Polish officers in Katyn was that he had escaped from a transit camp. As soon as he got to his homeland, in October 1939 he became involved in the military underground through his former teacher. During the Second World War, he conducted many military actions, trained cadets, and temporarily joined forces with partisans from the AL. He also took in as his subordinates ... Soviet POWs escaped from the German camp. General Leopold Okulicki "The Bear" decorated him with the Virtuti Militari Cross and was promoted to the rank of captain.
When the arrests of underground soldiers began after the Red Army entered, Sojczyński stopped his activities for a while and hid with his family. On November 29, 1945, he wrote a letter to the Starost of Radom, in which he stated:
In their shallow conceit, class egoism and fanatical fierceness, the proletarians make a mistake, instead of your heart you show your fist. But the result is one, ever greater ferocity in the fight for justice and freedom.
Stanisław Sojczyński pseudonym Warszyc (photo:public domain)
"Warszyc" organized the Polish Underground Army and continued combat operations, the most famous of which was the attack on Radomsko and the rescue of 57 members of the underground from prison. Among his people, he was considered a great patriot, a brave soldier, who, however, was not quick to reach for weapons. Partisans were forbidden from actions aimed at destabilizing the situation in the country, and, as Tomasz Toborek states in his book Warszyc. The Cursed Hero " did not allow attacking" Polish forces ", which he included, for example, of ordinary soldiers. He fiercely stamped out all forms of banditry and all abuses in his own ranks. He sentenced those guilty of such misdeeds to death.
Its goal was to destroy "red Nazism." At the same time, he believed that one should stick to the ideals for which one fights and put this principle into practice.
A calm old lady with ... kilograms of TNT. Janina Bodnar-Takajszwili
Janina Bodnar-Takajszwili was not the commander of any known unit, she did not conduct any great combat action, and yet her fate makes an electrifying impression. The quiet old lady did not say a word to her relatives about the activities she conducted during and after the war. She would have taken her secrets to the grave had it not been for the demolition of the house in which she used to live during the martial law. It turned out that it was one big hiding place of the independence underground, in which Ms. Janina kept weapons, explosives and the archive of the Wielkopolska Independent Volunteer Group "Warta" for several decades. Established in 1945 by former Home Army soldiers from the Western District of the AK WSGO, it was an anti-communist underground organization, founded on the initiative of Major Andrzej Rzewuski "Hańcza" and commanded by him. UB hunted her fiercely and already in October 1945 a wave of arrests took place.
A soldier with a Panzerfaust. Such "babies" belonging to "Warta" rested peacefully in Janina's attic (photo Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-709-0337A-10A Gronefeld, Gerhard, license CC-BY-SA 3.0)
Janina Bodnar-Takajszwili was probably the secretary of "Hańcza", who mentioned "Janina X" in his secret messages, without revealing any details. The woman managed to avoid arrest. When the workers discovered papers from the 1940s in her house and handed them over to her relatives, Janina claimed that these were only remnants of the Warsaw Uprising and that they did indeed include insurgent ID cards signed by Bor-Komorowski. It was only part of the truth. Bodnarowa-Takajszwili mentioned with a slight fear not to enter the attic, because there is still a typewriter on it with an order, the completion of which was prevented by the arrival of the UB. This is still not all.
There was a real arsenal under the floor, full of explosives and weapons, including, for example, panzerfausts, as well as ammunition, military maps and documents. A relative of Janina decided that the documents should be burned just in case, so that they would not burden anyone. In the end, so as not to be accused of possession of illegal weapons, they reported the matter to the militia. When the officers arrived, they secured, among other things, a few kilograms of TNT, mortar shells and anti-tank artillery shells. Janina Bodnar-Takajszwili herself did not have any problems with the open warehouse. For many years she was of interest to the security services, including through contacts with a courier of the government in exile (who turned out to be a double agent of the Soviets). She did not live to see the members of "Warta" as heroes.
She died in 1989, taking her secrets to the grave. Even the closest family did not know what her role was in the organization. According to the findings of the journalist Krzysztof M. Kaźmierczak, Janina was probably in charge of the cash register of "Warta".