HEROIC POLES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 February 1943, Page 4

HEROIC POLES

EXECUTED BY NAZIS. FOR HELPING BRITISH PRISONERS TO ESCAPE. Certain British families have particular personal reasons for deep gratitude to three Polish women and four Polish men, executed by the Nazis for helping British officers to escape from a prisoners’ camp in Western Poland, _ a London correspondent of the ’‘Christian Science Monitor” stated recently. The heroines, whose names are inscribed on a long honour'roll of Polish unconquerables killed in action against the enemy, since their country was trampled under the German jackboot, are Michalina Gorczyca and Irena Markiewicz of Poznan, and Marja Klochewska of Starachowice. Their bravery gains lustre because they paid the extreme penalty not for aiding themselves, their compatriots, or their country, as thousands in Poland surreptitiously do every day and night, but for aiding their allies, captured by a common foe. The men executed for the same offence in the same locality are Brenislaw Sobkowiak, Witold Laszczyski, Boleslaw Kierczynski and Bernard Drozd. A 16-year-old girl, Klara Dolnisk, and a boy, Zbigniew Klichowski, were treated with what Germans call “clemency” for their share in these escapes. They were sentenced to six years in a penal camp. Because of the possibility’, of prejudicing future attempts to help British prisoners escape, it is not practicable to furnish any details of the assistance given by the Poles. Nor is it permissible to divulge how recruits for the Polish Army turn up in Britain from Poland in order to resume openly the fight against the Nazis that they have been waging under cover. Despite savage punishment, however, the hidden campaigners carry on. Their resistance in a wide variety of forms continues ito illustrate to the Nazis and to the world at large that unconquerable resolve of the Poles to go on fighting until the day comes for the Polish Army and the Allies to march triumphantly into Warsaw and release Poland from bondage.