Before the outbreak of World War II, both totalitarian states, the Third Reich and the Soviet Union conducted advanced talks, concluding alliances and signing treaties. Their goal was a division of Europe and cooperation between the political polices of both countries, i.e. the German Gestapo and the Soviet NKVD. Cooperation and strengthening relations turned out to be especially useful after the outbreak of the war, contributing to a more effective fight against the Polish independence underground, which did not agree to either the Soviet or the German occupation of the country.<\/p>\n
In the spring of 1940, both aggressors, only seemingly independently of each other, carried out a large-scale action aimed at the extermination of the Polish elite. Soviet Russia committed the Katyn massacre where nearly 22,000 prisoners of war were murdered. Including the Polish military, policemen and soldiers of the Border Protection Corps. The majority of them were reserve officers who worked as lawyers, doctors, teachers or clerks before the war. The decision to liquidate them physically was made at the beginning of March 1940 by the top Soviet leadership, headed by Joseph Stalin.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, the Germans brutally murdered representatives of the Polish intelligentsia, clergy and members of the underground as part of Operation AB (Ausserordentliche Befriedungsaktion – Special Pacification Action). After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) decided that “the leading layers of the Polish population should be neutralized to the extent possible”. Also, Hitler himself, on September 12, 1939, ordered “mass destruction of the Polish intelligentsia.” It is assumed that between September and October 1939, the Germans murdered about 15,000 people in 600 executions. In November, as part of special actions, a large number of academic professors were arrested. During the conference at the end of May 1940, Hans Frank announced, “I openly admit that as a result, several thousand Poles will have to end their lives, mainly from the ideological spheres of Polish leaders … This is a necessary pacification action, beyond the normal methods of conduct … ”<\/p>\n
The executions were carried out in many places in occupied Poland. One of them, Palmiry, located on the edge of the Kampinos Forest near Warsaw, became a symbol of the martyrdom of the Polish intelligentsia. There the Germans murdered a total of 1,700 people including politicians (e.g. Maciej Rataj, the speaker of the Sejm from 1922 to 1928), lawyers, social activists, and sportsmen (e.g. Janusz Kusoci\u0144ski – Olympic champion from Los Angeles in 1932).<\/p>\n
Among the victims of the Katyn massacre and the Action AB, there were many related people.<\/p>\n
The daughters of general Dowbor-Mu\u015bnicki, Janina Lewandowska was murdered in Katyn on April 22, 1940, and Agnieszka in Palmiry, two months later, i.e. on June 20 or 21, 1940. The elder of the sisters, Janina, was born in 1908 in Kharkiv. She inherited her musical talent from her mother and began studying at the State Conservatory of Music in the piano class. However, aviation turned out to be her only and true passion. She graduated from the Higher School of Pilotage at the airport in Pozna\u0144-\u0141awica. Thanks to this passion, she met her future husband, flight instructor Mieczys\u0142aw Lewandowski. In August 1939, she was called up to the 3rd Aviation Regiment, stationed near Pozna\u0144. Unfortunately, she was taken prisoner by the Soviets in September. First, she was sent to the camp in Ostaszk\u00f3w, and then in Kozielsk. From there, she was taken to the Katyn Forest, where she was shot with shot in the back of the head on her 32nd birthday. She was the only woman murdered in Katyn. During the exhumations led by the Germans, her body was found. Participating in the works, the German scientist Prof. Gerhard Buhtz took her skull to Wroc\u0142aw. During the communist rule in Poland, it was stored by Prof. Boles\u0142aw Popielski. After confirming her identification, she was buried in the family tomb.<\/p>\n
Agnieszka Dowbor-Mu\u015bnicka was born on September 7, 1919, in Lus\u00f3w, where she later grew up. She graduated from the Jadwiga Zamoyska\u00a0gymnasium in Pozna\u0144. Here she also began her studies at the State School of Horticulture in Pozna\u0144. After Germany’s aggression against Poland and the incorporation of Pozna\u0144 into the Third Reich, she moved to Warsaw where she began to work in the underground Military Organization “Wolves”. Unfortunately, in the spring of 1940, the organization was followed by the Germans, who arrested her and her associates on April 25, 1940, and imprisoned them in Pawiak. There she was brutally investigated, and then, on June 20, the Germans took her with a group of other prisoners to a forest in Palmiry near Warsaw. There she was shot on June 20 or 21, 1940. After 1945, her body was taken from a mass grave and buried in a separate grave in Palmiry.<\/p>\n
On the 80th anniversary of the Katyn massacre and Action AB, in 2020, the Narodowy Bank Polski issued a collector’s coin “Katy\u0144, Palmiry 1940”, with the images of both sisters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 1940, two daughters of general J\u00f3zef Dowbor-Mu\u015bnicki, the commander of the Greater Poland Uprising (1918-1919) and the defender of Lwow in the war with Soviet Russia in 1920, were…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":15424,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history"],"yoast_head":"\n