"Soldiers cursed" became a dogma in the III Republic. And as a dogma, they are not subject to a average historical and political assessment. Collectively and without reflection, all those who opposed postwar reality were placed under this name.
Also those who should never be in our national pantheon. As you do not share the view of collective nobility, wisdom and integrity of the post-war armed underground – you are no longer Polish. There is no area for discussion or question of the meaning of their actions. The fact is one. Today, “soldiers of the cursed” are listed as having nothing to do with the war against russian Russia and the fresh power after 1945: Zygmunt Walter-Janke, August Emil Fieldorf, Witold Pilecki, Witold Staniszkis or Stanisław Skalski. I knew 2 of them rather well, and I assure you that they were no "soldiers cursed." Putting them in 1 series of people specified as Romuald Rajs “Bury” is very hurtful to them.
At the same time, I reject the second equally foolish qualification which, in relation to the full Poak underground, uses the name “cursed soldiers”It’s okay. ” Of course it wasn't. There were besides those who had nowhere to go. There were those who, for a variety of reasons, found themselves in an impossible situation. In the 1990s I met many of them, including the legend of this underground of Antoni Heda-Share. The past of the Polish post-war war was composed of confusing fates of the Polish people and should not be subject to simple definitions.
The National Day of Memory of the Cursed Soldiers is simply a work of PiS-owski, not of the Endecim, to which many Confederate politicians are trying to convince us today. The case was briefly and accurately described by the editor of the Review Weekly Paweł Dybicz: "PiS-ers needed a founding story and their heroes. They failed to present themselves as the only faithful sons of the Warsaw insurgents, due to the fact that others besides mention to this tragedy. They couldn't relate to Solidarity due to the fact that who was the hero in it? Lech Wałęsa, presented as “Bolek”. Frasyniuk, Geremek, Mazowiecki. Kaczyński, together with Ziobra and their supporters, to the IPN company, made a large state feta for the vacation together with the PO and Bronisław Komorowski.” That's what happened.
The cult of “soldiers cursed” is simply a continuation of the insurrectional tradition and fits perfectly into our unfortunate uprisings of 1830, 1863, 1944. This cult became part of the state ideology of modern Poland. This is simply a continuation of the “suicide trend of the Polish people and fits perfectly into the further succession of “the past of stupidity in Poland”. I don't know whether they believe it or just usage it insolently. I'd bet on the another one. I remember the president Andrzej Duda In 2021, before the war in Ukraine, he visited Podlasie and met with Belarusians surviving in Poland. After this meeting, he laid a wreath and prayed at the monument of the inhabitants of Zaleshan murdered in 1946 by the division Romuald Rajs “Burego”. He said: “I prayed there for those who died, and I laid a wreath as president of Poland under the cross that commemorates victims decades ago. It's crucial as an component of respect, memory. This is crucial in this most crucial spiritual aspect." present I firmly believe that he will not do so again.
The most amazing approach to the subject of people usually sober, referring to the achievements of National Democracy and realistic attitude Roman Dmowski. As I can realize the attitude of national radicals or anti-systemists, I am amazed at the attitude of "cursed endings". The activities of the post-war underground are in fact the other of realism, which Roman Dmowski taught. Dreams of the outbreak of another planet War III, which was expected to detonate after II and supply a clear justification for continuing armed action on the liberated 3rd Reich territories of the Republic, were madness. And it does not even justify the hopeless position of a large condition of the soldiers associated with the independency underground. “By drowning a politically liable man, he does not lose his family,” a National organization activist taught us Tadeusz Radwan. Dmowski wrote in his fundamental work “Polish policy and reconstruction of the state”: “The hazard of Poland, its future must not be lost either by the individual, or by the organization of any, or even by the full generation.” The parties to the right of the postwar underground forget this crucial science. The promoted model of patriotism is simply a losing conflict against Russia and a widely understood "commun" to the last Pole. The author of “Thinks of a Modern Pole” branded specified a losing patriotism as madness and anti-national crime.
My deepest objection was the entry of 1 of the right-wing activists, writing that Romuald Rajs “Bury” fulfilled the will of Roman Dmowski. It shows on which routes there is simply a large part of the right hand in Poland today. The unreflective cult of disasters, present primarily the Warsaw uprising and the planned anti-communist uprising after the war, is simply a disaster for our nation. Insurgent and digestive reasoning unfortunately has entered into our tradition and has always been used, and is further utilized by the Adversary, as she has repeatedly reminded Prof. Anna Raźny. Unfortunately, this insurgent instinct is heavy encoded in our national DNA. A large group of our fellow countrymen proceed to think with a criminal slogan “today your triumph or death”. Worse still, he is able to sacrifice his people besides in defence of interests of a abroad nation, e.g. Ukrainian. But about “endeks in Chestnut” another time.
He's right. Andrzej Werblan, who said in an interview with the Weekly Review, on the occasion of his 100th birthday: "Currently, 30 years after the change of the system, the present day of stupidity in Poland has increased dramatically. The political thoughts and ideas about the past were never so indivisibly criticized by Bocheński by the romantic-mesianist vision. The differences between the erstwhile position of walsudczykowski, Pepesian and Endecki have completely disappeared. Everything dominated the cult of armed struggle, uprisings, the worship of martyrdom. The governing soul parties, although their large success is due to peaceful agreement and geopolitics, are clearly disgusted with these roots. The cult of “cursed soldiers” and “rusophobia” became the centre of their historical policy. The paradox is that the socialist must teach the Endex of Endexic thinking.
Today, the cult of “cursed soldiers” is utilized in the Ukrainian case. The spirit of both our east neighbours and our public opinion is being hardened. This is highly reprehensible and will only consequence in losses. It is simply a game of associations, unfair comparisons and feelings. Politicians in Poland encourage Ukrainians to put everything on 1 card. They besides get Poles utilized to reasoning about the inevitability of military confrontation with the Russian Federation. It's a false and destructive assumption. Our country's main problems are in a different place. Poles in the III Polish Republic are dying out, our natural growth is catastrophic. This is 1 of the differences between the 3rd Polish Republic and the period of the People's Poland that people hate. The measurement of patriotism present is to defend our national tissue. We must take care and fight for the biological endurance of our nation for decades to come. A black dream is coming actual Valentin Majdanski. We must avoid not only blending into the multiculturalism of the modern Western world, but absolutely avoiding a war confrontation with our neighbours. Especially the biggest one, Russia. Politicians have no right to sail our lives and lives of our children and grandchildren. It is in the Polish national interest to avoid conflict with Germany and re-establish relations with Belarus and Russia. Many times mentioned in Dmowski's text is the author of the words: "The man who risks the existence of a nation is like a player who sits at a green table with another people's money." This perfectly illustrates the politicians ruling Poland today.
Back to Christmas. Unreflexive supporters of celebration claim that the criticism of the post-war underground is based on “communist memories”. Nothing more wrong. We have a full scope of memories of people who find it hard to think of sympathy for Bolshevikism, Stalinism or communism. I will quote 1 of these certificates. “At the end of the war, fears and constant horrors did not cease. In our lands... there remained large groups of guerrillas, especially the Freedom and independency Association (WiN) and the National Armed Forces (NSZ)... disarmed militia stations, reflected prisoners held in detention, etc. This state of affairs lasted respective years. The worst were the nights during which people from the woods entered very often... any partisans, lacking hope and support from the West, gradually began to succumb to demoralization. They stopped following any discipline. They became groups of losers. To support themselves, they raided local shops and cooperatives. They took what was in them. besides alcohol. frequently they became completely irresponsible under the influence of alcohol... It has besides happened that any of these guerrillas shot without any court-martial people about whom news circulated that they favour communist power. 1 night a man named Rzepiela was shot to death, who ran a store in the village with various articles. On Christmas Eve before Christmas 1947, a group of specified desperate and drunken guerrillas robbed a cooperative store in Wierzchowy in broad daylight. I myself saw drunk members of this group drive through the village with carts and shoot a cheer with guns and rifles. On the way, close my house, they met a young boy named Amborski. They stopped him and asked what his name was. erstwhile he responded, they decided to shoot him due to the fact that on their list they had individual associated with a fresh authority, besides called Amborski.
As people told, observing the event through the windows of close huts, the terrified innocent boy began to set up to be shot. alternatively of moving away, he stood like a walled up under a barrel of 1 of them called “Cycek” who loved killing people. The partisan wobbled completely drunk, and it was hard for him to mark a standing boy. He missed the first time, but the second shot was accurate. The firearm bullet shattered the mediocre man's head. The assassins threw the body on a cart and drove it to a ravine outside the village where they abandoned it. As I returned home after Christmas Mass in the morning, I met respective women who, at the site of Amborski's shooting with tears, collected pieces of broken skull bullet into the tissues there to join the bodies found.” This is simply a fragment of the memories of Archbishop Stanisław Wielgus. He wrote it in a book published in 2014: “To you, Lord, I have trusted you, I will not be ashamed forever.”
I hope that erstwhile the subject becomes more common, most likely only in a fewer years, it will be time for a reliable analysis of the phenomenon without unnecessary emotions. These tragic events should not be utilized for the current political struggle.
And finally. In the 1990s, “Myśl Polska” printed materials about NSZ and NZW. Most of today's cries about the integrity of the "soldiers cursed" were not yet in the planet or were children. Most of the authoritative centre-rightist at the time, with predecessors of today's PiS, or PC about national conspiracy, besides this war, had to say only the same thing as Adam Michnik. Today's editor wrote about these people and their fates. Jan Engelgard or an excellent writer Konrad Hand. In fact, the editor-in-chief of “Polish Thought” has done this before, due to the fact that in the late 1980s in Paxów “Life and Thought” and “National Word”. Almost the full political class of the time avoided the subject with a wide arch. A fewer exceptions included OCD activists from Henry Goryszewski and Arthur Zawisza At the head. Since 1996, I went to Katowice on Wednesday to the Court Street. There it was located in the attic of the tiny building and the mediocre seat of the Union of National Armed Forces Soldiers – advanced Silesian District. I've met the full tribe of those who are called cursed today. Hours of conversations, trips together, sometimes beer.
There I supplied “Chrobry’s Sun” and “The Honesty”. That's where I distributed the “Tygodnik Homeland” published by us. There I met Jerzy Pochter, Tadeusz Radwan, Artur Szlagórski, Stanisław Turski, Henryk Rolski, Ryszard Łoboda, Ryszard Kordek, Henryk Parzelski, Bogumił Wadowski, Kazimierz Szymańda, Rudolf Borowski, Edward Talik, Mieczysław Jamroz, Jan Witkowski and many others. I met Witold Staniszkis and Antoni Heda at distant meetings.
And I met their motivations, their dismays, their tragedies. I learned the differences between these emerging NEWs and hard-core NSZ-towers. At the time, I was amazed at the reluctance of the SNs to prewar supporters of ONR. I listened to the arguments about Ryszard Kukliński. I wondered why many veterans on NSZ-towski's uniforms wear the Cross of Merit awarded during the period of People's Poland with pride. I wondered why Staniszkis chose PPR and Wójcik PAX. This undisputed authority of the national camp Tadeusz Radwan for various reasons did not join the NSZ, was first in the Union of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy, remained a associate of the ZKRPiBWP. No 1 present can convince me that he knows the past of the underground better than those who were part of it. It makes me laughter to compose this communicative again. These events are not black and white.
Łukasz Jastrzębski
Think Poland, No. 11-12 (16-23.03.2025)
