PM Kopacz to attend WWII Battle of Bologna tribute

The battle, which was fought between 9 and 21 April 1945, was one of the last engagements of Polish forces during World War II.

The attack against the Germans was led by General Anders' Second Polish Corps, which was operating as part of the British 8 Army.

Acting battle commander Major General Zygmunt Bohusz-Szyszko lost 234 men at Bologna before the city was liberated. Some 1128 Poles were injured.

Poland secured the city in the early hours of 21 April, and a Polish flag was raised on the town hall.

Besides meeting veterans, Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz will take part in a ceremony on Saturday afternoon at the Polish War Cemetery in Bologna.

The site is the largest Polish war cemetery in Italy, with 1400 soldiers laid to rest there.

The vast majority of General Anders' soldiers declined to return to Poland after the war, with a Moscow-backed communist regime installed in Warsaw.

Most of Anders' men were from lands in eastern Poland that the Soviet Union had seized in September 1939. Churchill and Roosevelt agreed to leave these lands in the Soviet Union at the Yalta Conference of 1945.

The Second Corps was predominantly composed of men who had been sent to forced labour camps in the depths of the Soviet Union in 1940. When Hitler reneged on his pact with Moscow in 1941, Stalin was obliged to free his Polish prisoners, under pressure from the British and the Polish government-in-exile based in London.

Anders transported thousands of Poles out of the Soviet Union to Iran. They later crossed the Mediterranean and took part in the Italian campaign. (nh)

Source: PAP