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Post by Bonobo on Mar 30, 2008 14:45:25 GMT 1
Boy and girl scouts took an active part in Polish resistance against Nazi German occupiers. Their most spectacular participation was in Warsaw Rising. But before it, there had been other acts of incredible bravery and sacrifice. Today, Warsaw is celebrating the 65 anniversary of the Operation Arsenal. www.tvn24.pl/-1,1544139,wiadomosc.html
The Operation Arsenal, code name: "Meksyk II" (Polish: Akcja pod Arsenałem) was the first major and legendary operation by the Szare Szeregi (Gray Ranks) Polish Underground formation during the Nazi occupation of Poland. It took place on March 26, 1943 in Warsaw. Its name was coined after the Warsaw Arsenal, in front of which the action took place.
The plan was to free the troop leader Jan Bytnar "Rudy", who was arrested together with his father by the Gestapo. 28 scouts led by Warsaw Standard Commander Stanisław Broniewski "Orsza" taking part. The initiator and the commander of the "Attack Group" was Tadeusz Zawadzki "Zośka".
The successfully conducted operation led to the release of Jan Bytnar and 24 other prisoners, including an another Storm Group troop leader, Henryk Ostrowski "Henryk", and 6 women, in an attack on the prison van that was taking the inmates from Pawiak Prison to Gestapo Headquarters at Szucha Avenue.
Jan Bytnar unfortunately died four days later on account of injuries sustained due to German maltreatment. Both of his torturers were later executed by Szare Szeregi.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_ArsenalSee a film rendition of the event: |
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Post by valpomike on Mar 30, 2008 16:17:36 GMT 1
Great film, just another reason, I wish I could understand Polish. The Polish were are are great fighters. This is still another reason to dislike the Germans.
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Post by Bonobo on Mar 30, 2008 19:16:17 GMT 1
Great film, just another reason, I wish I could understand Polish. The Polish were are are great fighters. This is still another reason to dislike the Germans. Mike, today`s Germans are different than 60 years ago. Besides, Germany is the most important continental European ally of the USA. It means something, doesn`t it? Do you think that American governments, since President Eisehhower`s in 1950s, have been wrong in their judgement of Germany as a partner and ally? |
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Post by valpomike on Mar 30, 2008 21:42:58 GMT 1
I will think on that.
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Post by franciszek on Mar 30, 2008 22:33:39 GMT 1
I too now admire Germany we would never have Porche, BMW,Mercedes,VW or lots of other things. one man tainted this nation and i will never say his name on this forum.I spent 3weeks in Germany/Austria when i was 11 years old and i met some very nice people i have met more nice Germans than :well Ive never met a bad one.
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Post by valpomike on Mar 31, 2008 15:55:21 GMT 1
I own a Benz, and it is the best car I have ever had, but.
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Post by Bonobo on Apr 1, 2008 21:16:10 GMT 1
I own a Benz, and it is the best car I have ever had, but. Better than American cars? |
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Post by Bonobo on Apr 1, 2008 21:32:16 GMT 1
Great film, just another reason, I wish I could understand Polish. The Polish were are are great fighters. MIke, I can translate the best parts of it: 5:20 A passer-by asks a fighter: Has the Rising started? (It shows that Warsawians were constantly thinking about it). 8:37 Three fighters come out of a building and run into the Polish blue policemen who cooperated with Nazis. One fighter asks: Excuse me, Sir, do you know what is going on? (He forgot that he is carrying a gun in public). The policemen, looking at the gun, says: No, we know nothing. The other fighter says to the gunman: Hide this iron! (it shows that closing an eye meant longer life). 9:00 Two fighters board a street car. One asks the ticket inspector for two tickets. He answers: Army guys don`t pay. (it shows that underground fighters enjoyed great respect of Warsawians). |
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Post by Bonobo on Aug 29, 2011 19:08:12 GMT 1
In defence of Katowice
Alex Webber - 25th October 2009
Someone really ought to stick up for Katowice. The butt of jokes across the country and throughout this guide, it was the butt end of a rifle for Silesia during World War II, with Katowice taking it in the chest. One of Poland’s youngest metropolises, lacking a cache of cultural treasures, Katowice was essentially left to the wolves when war broke out, as the Polish Army back-peddled to sure up their positions around Kraków. While the shelling of Westerplatte on September 1st, 1939 is recognised as the first engagement of the Second World War, what few people realise is that Hitler actually started that script here in Silesia a day earlier.
Dressing his SS officers as Polish soldiers, Hitler staged a mock attack on Gliwice’s radio tower which lay just inside the eastern border of Germany at the time. International journalists were rushed to the scene and instructed to be outraged when they saw dead Dachau concentration camps victims strewn about in Nazi uniforms, giving the deranged Fuehrer justification for his invasion of Poland the next morning. As the Schleswig-
Holstein fired artillery at fortifications outside Gdansk, Nazi troops were already advancing into Silesia, bearing down from the north and south in a well-orchestrated attack. To avoid entrapment in the region, General Szylling - commander of the Krakowian army - retreated east on September 2nd, leaving the defence of Katowice to a ragtag team of volunteer citizens: haggard partisans vetted in the Silesian Uprisings twenty years earlier and pubescent Polish boy and girl scouts. One of the largest organisations in the country in 1939, the scouts valiantly came to the defence of Poland, making them the face of Nazi resistance.
Dispatching themselves to the highest points in the city, the scouts set up critical defence posts from which to await the Germans and rain hellfire upon them. As the front ranks of German General Neuling’s army approached Katowice from the south on September 3rd, they were met
with a spirited resistance before even reaching Ko¶ciuszko Park. Stymied by the rifle-wielding upstarts, the German troops spent the night mending their egos until the morning.
Upon the dawn of September 4th, the scene had shifted and a steady engagement of gunfire carried on around Plac Wolno¶ci (H-1/2) with German troops being repelled from defensive positions on nearby Gliwicka and Miko³owska streets. A noble and tenacious effort it was,
however the tide soon turned on the ill-equipped, inexperienced and hopelessly outnumbered scouts.
Camping outside the centre seemed to have only refreshed the enemy, redoubling their ranks and munitions, while the trembling scouts were exhausted, cold and hungry atop their makeshift skyline foxholes. First fell Plac Wolno¶ci. Then fell the Rynek. In fact by noon on September 4th
almost all of Poland’s underground resistance had been rounded up and executed en masse. Only the parachute tower in Ko¶ciusko Park remained as the final outpost of Katowice’s independence. Exchanging fire with German troops into the evening of September 4th, the tower was
finally destroyed when the foul-playing Germans used an antitank gun to obliterate the whippersnappers.
The tower that stands in the park today is a 35 metre reconstruction of the original 50 metre structure and the only parachute tower remaining in Poland. The scouts’ heroic defence of the citadel, suicidal as it was, grew so legendary it became the popular subject of poems and songs. Today a granite obelisk commemorates their brief but noble ascent into adulthood atop that fabled tower, while another monument stands at Plac Obronów Katowic..JPG)   insilesia.pl/files/repository/4606.JPG lh5.ggpht.com/_7gvaG1P80HI/TNUZkmmlxlI/AAAAAAAAAKg/OAeGo96_E0A/IMG_0809.JPG
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