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Decorated Warsaw Uprising fighter dies, aged 101

PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk 04.08.2018 07:50
General Zbigniew Ścibor-Rylski, a former soldier in the Polish Home Army World War II resistance movement, has died at the age of 101.
Zbigniew Ścibor-Rylski, pictured in 2011. Photo: PAP/Bartłomiej ZborowskiZbigniew Ścibor-Rylski, pictured in 2011. Photo: PAP/Bartłomiej Zborowski

Ścibor-Rylski was a holder of the Virtuti Militari medal, Poland's highest military decoration, and the president of an association of former insurgents who fought in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.

The news of his death was confirmed by Jan Ołdakowski, head of the Warsaw Uprising museum, on Friday, two days after the Polish capital marked 74 years since the outbreak of an insurgency aiming to wrest the city from Nazi German occupation during World War II.

Some 20,000 fighters of the Polish Home Army took up arms against the Germans on August 1, 1944, launching what would be a 63-day uprising which was eventually quashed by the better-armed Nazis.

Around 18,000 insurgents and some 150,000-180,000 Polish civilians were killed in the rebellion, according to Poland's Institute of National Remembrance.

(pk)

Source: PAP

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