28.02.2022
COLLECTED CONTENT: The Cursed Soldiers
The Cursed Soldiers (also known as "doomed soldiers","accursed soldiers", "damned soldiers" or "indomitable soldiers") is a name applied to a variety of Polish resistance movements formed in the later stages of World War II and afterwards.
The ceremony on the occasion of the Polish National Day of Remembrance of the Cursed Soldiers was held on the square in front of the penitentiary in Racibórz, where the monument commemorating the heroes who had sacrificed their lives for the independent homeland was erected
The Accursed Soldiers are one of those historical phenomena which have been publicly discussed in recent years. The phrase refers not only to armed resistance as a method of struggle against the imposed regime but also to specific actions undertaken by units or decisions made by their commanders.
The term "Accursed Soldiers" reflects communist repression, namely the anathema of collective oblivion cast upon those who offered armed resistance against the "people’s government". The phrase "Indomitable Soldiers" describes the attitude of these heroes and their approach towards the communist occupant they fought, both at home and in exile.
After 1945, the world paid tribute to the soldiers who had contributed to the victory over Nazi Germany. Not so in Poland. The communist government did all it could to make people forget about war-time heroes, and those who dared oppose the new regime were mistreated most persistently and adamantly. It is only today that we can honour them as they deserve.
The totalitarian authorities which they were fighting against called them “bandits” and “enemies of the people”. Today, we are restoring the Cursed Soldiers to their rightful place in the national pantheon.
On the calm, Monday afternoon of October 21st 1963, the farmers from the Majdan Kozic Górskich village were working in the fields as usual. In the air was the smell of burned potato roots. Suddenly, the silence was ruptured by machine gun fire: the final stand of Józef Franczak codename “Laluś” begun.
Twice the death penalty, 15 years of imprisonment, loss of public rights and honorary citizen rights forever and the forfeiture of wealth by the State Treasury – that was the sentence given by the Communist Regional Military Court in Gdańsk for not even 18 years old Danuta Siedzikówna codename “Inka”, a nurse of the Polish Home Army.
