Register of WWII resistance veterans launched

AK veterans, Sanok, 2008. Photo: wikipedia

The first version of the register is due to be ready in November 2014.

During its peak in the summer of 1944, when the so-called Home Army (AK) launched the Warsaw Rising against the Nazi occupiers, numbers reached an estimated 390,000, including 10,800 officers.

“We hope that this will be the most complete list that is possible,” commented Tadeusz Filipkowski, board-member of the World Association of Home Army Soldiers (SZZAK), in an interview with the Dziennik Polski daily.

Historian Michal Bienkowicz has noted that compiling the register will be a gargantuan endeavour.

“This is undoubtedly a very difficult task, because although we have no lack of sources, they're scattered across private collections and archives.”

He also said that while information on high-ranking AK officers is ubiquitous, much less is known about the lower ranks.

Bienkowicz stressed that after a Soviet-backed regime was installed in Poland following the war, many AK veterans were obliged to conceal their wartime past.

Thousands of AK veterans were persecuted by the communist authorities in the wake of the war, with deportations to Siberia and a rash of show trials.

The Home Army had been loyal to the Polish-government-in-exile in London, and the formation was officially disbanded in January 1945.

Many resistance members refused to lay down their arms, and the fight was taken up against the communists under organisations such as Freedom and Independence. (nh)