President Andrzej Duda signed a law establishing a National Day of Remembrance for the Home Army Soldiers. The holiday will be celebrated on 14 February, the anniversary of the transformation of the Union of Armed Struggle (ZWZ) into the Home Army (AK) which created one of the largest anti-Nazi movements in wartime Europe.

The President thanked the initiators of the law and parliamentarians who expressed widespread support for this law, as well as the living soldiers of the Home Army who continue to pass on patriotic traditions to young Poles. 

“This celebration is important. It covers the whole spectrum and pays respect to all the participants in that struggle,’ the President pointed out. He pointed out that it commemorates the soldiers of the Home Army who ‘in a conspiracy under German occupation fought to regain independence, for a free and sovereign Poland,” he said. 

“It was also part of the entire underground structure of the Polish Underground State,” he added.

On 14 February 1942, the Polish Prime of the government in exile operating from London, Minister General Władysław Sikorski gave the order to transform the Union of Armed Struggle (Związek Walki Zbrojnej, ZWZ) into the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK). 

The Home Army was an underground military organisation and an integral part of the Polish Armed Forces. 

It was operating under the orders of the Commander-in-Chief and the Government of the Republic of Poland in Exile. 

The main task of the Home Army was the fight to regain independence by organising and conducting self-defence and sabotage against the Germans and preparing for a general uprising that was to break out in Poland at the time of Germany’s military collapse.

Armia Krajowa also fought two major operations against the Nazi German occupation forces: Akcja Burza (Storm) and the famous Warsaw Uprising in 1944, which was the greatest armed rebellion against the Germans in the history of World War 2. 

Source: PAP

Photo:@KolorHistorii

Tomasz Modrzejewski