DNA tests identify victims of communist terror

Lidia Lwow-Eberle (C) stands next to a photograph of her former fiancee, Major Zygmunt Szendielarz, one of the 9 victims of communist oppression identified in the latest wave of tests. Photo: PAP/Grzegorz Jakubowski

Among the identified figures was Major Zygmunt Szendielarz, who commanded Polish partisans both during World War II and afterwards following the installation of a Soviet-backed communist regime in the country.

His former fiancee, Lidia Lwow-Eberle (pictured above), herself a veteran of the Polish underground, attended a press conference on Thursday held at the offices of the state-backed Institute of National Remembrance (IPN).

The remains of the men had been excavated from the Powazki Military Cemetery in Warsaw as part of a project entitled “The search for unknown burial places of victims of communist terror in the years 1944-1956.”

Alongside IPN, the project was aided by another state-backed institution,the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites (ROPWiM).

Major Zygmunt Szendielarz commanded a brigade of partisans in Nazi-occupied Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania), as part of the Home Army (AK), the underground force loyal to the Polish government-in-exile.

After the war he served in the Freedom and Independence (WiN) partisan organisation, but he was ultimately arrested in 1948, and executed in February 1951.

Other figures identified include Hieronim Dekutowski, who had also been a commander of WiN following the war. Earlier, he had been parachuted into Nazi-occupied Poland as part of the elite 'Silent and Unseen' special forces squad (Cichociemi), after training in the UK. He was executed in March 1949, following capture by the communist security services.

IPN has a growing DNA database of victims of communist oppression, having called on relatives of the deceased to take part in the project. The work is ongoing. (nh)

Source: PAP