Major Zygmunt Szendzielarz “Łupaszka” exhumed at Powązki Military Cemetery

Major Zygmunt Szendzielarz “Łupaszka” is another victim of communist secret police that was identified after the exhumation at Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw. Results of identification were declared by Institute of National Remembrance on Thursday.

During the World War II, major Szendzielarz was a commander of the Polish 5th Wilno Home Army Brigade. In September 1945, he moved to Pomerania where he organized a subversion in the area of West Pomeranian, Gdańsk and Olsztyn Voivodeships. November 2, 1950, he was sentenced to multiple death penalty by the Soviet-controlled court martial in Warsaw. He was executed on February 8, 1951, in Warsaw’s Mokotów Prison. Until now the place of his burial was unknown.

Communist propaganda presented Polish soldiers of Home Army who fought against Sovietization as criminals and enemies of Poland. “We are not any kind of gang how called us traitors and degenerate sons of our home country. We are from Polish cities and villages. Many of your fathers and brothers is with us” – said major “Łupaszka” to soldiers on March 1946.

Except Szendzielarz, other eight soldiers of Home Army killed by communist authorities during World War II were identified. Among them major Hieronim Dekutowski “Zapora”, a soldier of Polish Armed Forces in the West,  a member of Cichociemni, a great commander of partisan units of Home Army and “Freedom and Independence” organization.

In the area of Powązki Military Cemetery, where between 1948 and 1956 communist authorities buried several hundred of dead bodies of victims killed by the UB officials, they found, since 2012, remains of about 200 people. The initiative of the Institute of National Remembrance run together with the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites is aimed at, except for worthy burying of victims, restoring memory of people who after the World War II resisted the Sovietization of Poland, often with a gun in hand.

Researches, including geneticist, are looking for heroes of the Polish Underground State, Warsaw insurgents, soldiers of the anti-communist underground, among others general Emil August Fieldorf “Nil’, rittmeister Witold Pilecki and podpolkovnik Łukasz Ciepliński “Pług” – a commander of “Freedom and Independence” organization.

Source: http://www.wilnoteka.lt/pl/artykul/najlepsi-kibice-kobiety

Tłumaczenie by Sara Howicka w ramach praktyk w Europejskiej Fundacji Praw Człowieka, www.efhr.eu. Translated by Sara Howicka within the framework of a traineeship programme of the European Foundation of Human Rights, www.efhr.eu.