Antoni Listowski

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Antoni Listowski and Symon Petliura in Berdychiv, April 1920 Symon Petliura and Antoni Listowski during Polish-Soviet War.PNG
Antoni Listowski and Symon Petliura in Berdychiv, April 1920

Antoni Listowski (29 March 1865, Warsaw - 13 September 1927, Warsaw) was a Polish military officer. After being a major general of the Imperial Russian Army (from 1916 on), he became general in the Polish Armed Forces and took part in the Polish-Soviet War. [1]

General Antoni Listowski won the battle for Pinsk in March 1919 commanding the 9th Infantry Division. [2] The city was taken over in a late-winter blizzard with considerable human losses sustained by his 34th Infantry Regiment who forced the Bolsheviks to retreat to the other side of the river. [3]

General Antoni Listowski, was a professional officer who had served in the Tsarist army. He had had wide experience on the front and possessed the temperament of an ardent fighter, particularly valuable when directing the kind of manoeuvres necessary in a war conducted on the country's borders. If it was a question of the operational problem of the 9th Division, then replacing Listowski with Sikorski was a very rash move. — Józef Lewandowski [4]

On 5 April 1919, Listowski's troops committed the Pinsk massacre, executing thirty five suspected pro-Bolshevik Jews. While Listowski was not directly responsible for the massacre, which was ordered by Aleksander Narbutt-Łuczyński, he did justify the killings afterwards. In his order to the population of Pinsk of 7 April 1919, two days after the massacre, Listowski claimed that the "town's Jews as a whole were guilty of the crime of blatant ingratitude." [5]

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References

  1. Cloud & Olson; Stanley Cloud; Lynne Olson (2004). A Question of Honor: The Kosciuszko Squadron: Forgotten Heroes of World War II. Random House, Inc. ISBN   0-375-72625-X.
  2. Dr. Andrzej Nieuważny, Nicolaus Copernicus University. Atlantyda Polesia. Księga Kresów Wschodnich. Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine Rzeczpospolita , 15 June 2013.
    - Województwo Poleskie, rys historyczny. Kresy News. Lwów
  3. Maciej Rosalak, "Ponury konflikt wśród poleskich błot" (A gloomy fight in the Polesie mud) Archived 2 May 2014 at the Wayback Machine Rzeczpospolita, 14 April 2011.
    - Dr. Andrzej Nieuważny, Atlantyda Polesia Archived 2017-10-15 at the Wayback Machine p. 4 of 6. Rzeczpospolita, 15 June 2013.
    - Mieczysław B. Biskupski, Piotr Stefan Wandycz. Ideology, Politics, and Diplomacy in East Central Europe , Boydell & Brewer, 2003.
    - Davies, Norman (2005). God's Playground: A History of Poland. Columbia University Press. p. 192. ISBN   0-231-12819-3.
    - Davies, Norman, White Eagle, Red Star: the Polish-Soviet War, 1919–20, St. Martin's Press, 1972, pages 47-48
  4. Józef Lewandowski. "History and Myth: Pinsk, April 1919", Polin 2, 1988.
  5. Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History, Indiana University Press, David Engel, page 33