Wladyslaw Ossowski (born 5 November 1925 in the village of Iwaszkowce near Turka, Poland, died 5 August 2000 in Legnica), was a Polish boyscout and member of the White Couriers.
Using pseudonyms Maly Wladzio, Smyk, and Pitolcio Ossowski, as a 14-year-old boy, began leading Polish escapees from Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland. Between late 1939 and mid-1940, Ossowski, together with a group of Polish scouts mostly from Lwow, led scores of people across Soviet-Hungarian border (see: Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact) in the Eastern Carpathians. He would lead to Budapest those Poles who wanted to escape Soviet occupation. From Hungary, he would bring newspapers and directives of General Wladyslaw Sikorski. Ossowski, who was born and raised in the borderland area (before the war, there had been the Polish - Czechoslovakian border), used his knowledge and skills.
On 8 May 1940 Ossowski was arrested in a house in the village of Komarniki, on the way to Hungary. At first, he was transported to a military prison in Drohobycz, but the trial of the whole group of couriers took place in Lwow. Ossowski was sentenced to death, but due to his young age (14 at the time), the sentence was changed into 30 years of hard labor. He was taken to a Gulag in Siberia and his nationality was changed from Polish to Ukrainian, which made it impossible for him to return to Poland in latter years. Ossowski was released in 1955 and settled in Krasnoyarsk. In the following years, he was arrested multiple times and his adventures were described in a book written by Marek Celt. Despite living in Soviet Union for several decades, he never forgot the Bałak jargon of the Polish language.
In 1991 Ossowski and his family were accidentally found and next year they returned to Poland, after 52 years spent in Siberia. At first he settled in Szczecin, where he tried to run a pizzeria, given to him by a generous person. He frequently met local boyscouts, telling them about his adventures. Some time in late 1990s, Ossowski moved to Legnica, where he died.
Władysław Eugeniusz Sikorski was a Polish military and political leader.
Red Ruthenia, also called Red Rus' or Red Russia, is a term used since the Middle Ages for the south-western principalities of Kievan Rus', namely the Principality of Peremyshl and the Principality of Belz. It is closely related to the term Cherven Cities.
Eastern Borderlands or simply Borderlands was a term coined for the eastern part of the Second Polish Republic during the interwar period (1918–1939). Largely agricultural and extensively multi-ethnic with a Polish minority, it amounted to nearly half of the territory of interwar Poland. Historically situated in the eastern Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, following the 18th-century foreign partitions it was divided between the Empires of Russia and Austria-Hungary, and ceded to Poland in 1921 after the Treaty of Riga. As a result of the post-World War II border changes, all of the territory was ceded to the USSR, and none of it is in modern Poland.
The Polish government-in-exile, officially known as the Government of the Republic of Poland in exile, was the government in exile of Poland formed in the aftermath of the Invasion of Poland of September 1939, and the subsequent occupation of Poland by Germany, the Soviet Union, and the Slovak Republic, which brought to an end the Second Polish Republic.
Walerian Czuma was a Polish general and military commander. He is notable for his command over a Polish unit in Siberia during the Russian Civil War, and the commander of the defence of Warsaw during the siege in 1939.
Józef Kasparek (1915–2002) was a Polish lawyer, historian and political scientist.
The Union of Armed Struggle, also translated as the Union for Armed Struggle, Association of Armed Struggle, and Association for Armed Struggle, was an underground army formed in Poland following its invasion in September 1939 by Germany and the Soviet Union that opened World War II. It existed from 13 November 1939 until 14 February 1942, when it was renamed into Home Army.
Tadeusz Chciuk-Celt was a World War II Polish Silent Unseen, and later a journalist and author.
Stanisław Ostrowski was a Polish politician, best known for serving as the last Polish Mayor of Lwow, and was President of Poland-in-exile.
Władysław Gizbert-Studnicki was a Polish politician and publicist. Throughout his life, Studnicki was famous for his strongly pro-German stance, and in the Polish People's Republic all his books were banned from publication. He was the older brother of historian Wacław Studnicki.
Henryk Cybulski was a Polish resistance leader.
The Czortków uprising was a failed attempt at resisting Soviet state repressions by the young anti-Soviet Poles most of whom were prewar students from the local high school. The uprising took place in the Soviet-occupied Polish town of Czortków during World War II. The insurgents attempted to storm the local Red Army barracks and a prison in order to release Polish soldiers incarcerated there. The attack occurred on the night of January 21–22, 1940. It was the first Polish civilian uprising against the Nazi-Soviet occupation of Poland.
Rudolf "Rudek" Regner, was a Polish scout, soldier and member of the White Couriers. Before World War II, he worked as a bookkeeper in a cooperative located in southeastern Polish town of Turka.
White Couriers was a group of around 20-30 Polish boy scouts and former soldiers of the Polish Army, most of whom had been associated with the interbellum sports club Junak Drohobycz. It existed between October 1939 and July 1940, when it was broken by the Soviet NKVD. The task of the White Couriers was to smuggle people from Soviet-occupied southeastern part of the Second Polish Republic, to the Hungarian region of Carpathian Ruthenia and further to Budapest. The White Couriers were part of the Grey Ranks, a wartime codename for the underground Polish Scouting Association.
Alfred Biłyk was a Polish lawyer, military officer, and politician, last Voivode of the Lwów Voivodeship. He committed suicide, when he realized that he would not be able to return to his hometown.
Wacław Lipiński (1896–1949) was a Polish historian, military officer and resistance fighter, lieutenant colonel in the Polish Army of the Second Polish Republic, recipient of Polish highest military decoration, the Order of Virtuti Militari.
On September 1, 1939, the armed forces of Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west initiating World War II. Two weeks later, on September 17, Soviet Union joined Germany in their attack on the Second Polish Republic. By early October, Poland was defeated. The occupied Poland was the only country in Europe where the Nazis had introduced a total ban on regional sports clubs. Football was allowed to be practised only by the Germans in the annexed areas of Upper Silesia. Polish activists and players risked their lives by organizing clandestine football competitions in Kraków, Warsaw and Poznań.
The flight and forced displacement of Poles from all territories east of the Second Polish Republic (Kresy) pertains to the dramatic decrease of Polish presence on the territory of the post-war Soviet Union in the first half of the 20th century. The greatest migrations took place in waves between the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and in the aftermath of World War II in Europe.
Franciszek Józef Sikorski was a Polish engineer, Brigadier general of the Polish Army and a murdered victim of the Katyn Massacre.
Zygmunt Felczak was a Polish politician. He was a member of the State National Council and a deputy governor of Pomerania. As an activist of the National Workers' Party and the Labour Faction, he founded the daily paper "Ilustrowany Kurier Polski" and took part in the Warsaw uprising.
