"Cursed Soldier" buried at Powazki Military Cemetery

Zygmunt Szendzielarz, one of the Cursed Soldiers, was buried with military honours at the Powazki Military Cemetery on Sunday, 65 years after he had been executed by Poland's communist-era authorities.

PAP © 2016 / Marcin Obara / Warszawa, 24.04.2016. Uroczystości pogrzebowe ppłk. Zygmunta Szendzielarza "Łupaszki", 24 bm. w Warszawie. Miejsce pochówku Żołnierza Niezłomnego przez lata było nieznane; po ponad pół wieku spocznie na Wojskowych Powązkach, razem ze swoją córką. Na uroczystości obecni są przedstawiciele najwyższych władz państwowych i wojskowych. (mr) PAP/Marcin Obara PAP © 2016 / Marcin Obara

The Cursed Soldiers were members of the anti-communist resistance movement fighting against Poland's new Russia-backed communist authorities after the end of WW2.

Szendzielarz (1910-1951), a Polish army soldier in September 1939, imprisoned by the Soviets after their invasion of Poland, managed to escape from a Soviet prison and in 1940 joined the Polish resistance movement. After the end of WW2, together with a group of soldiers from the Home Army (AK), he continued to fight against the communist authorities.

Arrested in 1948, he was sentenced to death in 1950, executed in 1951 and secretly buried in a mass grave.

Szendzielarz's remains were found in 2013 at the so called Laczka (little lawn) at Warsaw's Powazki Military cemetery where around 300 anti-communist fighters were buried secretly after most of them had been shot in the head in a Warsaw prison from 1946 to 1955. Their bodies were dumped in unmarked holes in the ground. Some of those mass graves have not been found until today. The remains of over 200 victims buried at Laczka have already been exhumed and 35 have been identified.

In the 1990s Szendzielarz was rehabilitated by a court and in 2006 the Sejm (lower house) honoured him with a resolution saying that he "was a symbol of an unyielding struggle for an independent Poland."

During a mass preceding the funeral Szendzielarz was posthumously promoted to the rank of colonel.

Present at the ceremonies were top state and military officials including President Andrzej Duda and Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz, who had signed the decision promoting Szendzielarz.

"Today, 65 years later, having found Colonel Zygmunt Szendzielarz's remains, remembering the Cursed Soldiers and holding a state funeral, we are bringing back dignity to Poland," the president said during the mass. "A dignity trampled by those who once murdered Zygmunt Szendzielarz," he added. (PAP)

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