Polish WWII military leader remembered on death anniversary

Officials on Thursday paid tribute to Polish World War II military leader Gen. Władysław Anders to mark the 52nd anniversary of his death.

Gen. Władysław Anders

PAP/Reprodukcja

Born in 1892, Gen. Anders was captured by the Soviets during World War II and imprisoned in Moscow in February 1940.

When Hitler turned on Stalin in June 1941, Anders was released from Moscow's Lubyanka Prison and given the task of forming an army from the survivors among the 1.5 million Poles who had been captured by the Soviets in 1939 or later deported to the Soviet Union.

Anders led some 77,000 soldiers, accompanied by over 43,000 civilians who had suffered starvation in labour camps and gulags out of the Soviet Union into Iran.

In 1943, the Second Polish Corps led by Anders landed in Italy.

After the war, the communist government in Poland deprived Anders of Polish citizenship and military rank. These were posthumously reinstated after the collapse of communism in 1989.

After #WW2, #WładysławAnders refused to return to Poland, then a Soviet puppet state, which took his citizenship because of his ties to the #PolishGovernmentInExile. In 1946, he became Inspector-General of the Polish forces-in-exile and settled down in #GreatBritain. pic.twitter.com/pWzB1f3fyy

— Institute of National Remembrance (@ipngovpl_eng) May 12, 2022

Anders died in London on May 12, 1970, the 26th anniversary of the famous Battle of Monte Cassino, and was buried, in accordance with his will, at the Polish War Cemetery at Monte Cassino in Italy.

On 12 May 1970, exactly 26 years after his soldiers had entered the battle of #MonteCassino, #WładysławAnders, the commander of the Polish II Corps, passed away in London. He was buried next to his men at the Monte Cassino Polish War Cemetery. pic.twitter.com/RtnyKl8NkU

— Institute of National Remembrance (@ipngovpl_eng) May 12, 2022

Source: IAR, PAP, polskieradio24.pl