OTTAWA CITIZEN
Eva
Konopacki's gallant, nine-week resistance in
occupied Poland
Seventy-six
years ago, she was an 18-year-old high school
student and a soldier in the Polish Home Army,
the occupied country's largest underground
resistance movement.
Author of the article: Andrew Duffy
Publishing date:Jul 29, 2020
Eva Poninska Konopacki was 18
years old and a soldier in the Polish Home Army
when it launched a valiant, but doomed campaign to
oust the Germans from Warsaw on Aug. 1, 1944. Her
heroism was rewarded with one of Poland¹s highest
military honours.
KONOPACKI FAMILY PHOTO
At 94, Ottawa’s Eva Poninska Konopacki still has
vivid memories of Aug. 1, 1944, the start of her
gallant, nine-week war against the Nazis.
“At my age, you remember your younger years better
than the present,” Konopacki, a retired teacher,
said in an interview Tuesday in Minto Park, near her
home. “My memories from that time are very sharp.”
Seventy-six years ago, Konopacki was an 18-year-old
high school student and a soldier in the Polish Home
Army, the occupied country’s largest underground
resistance movement.
Acting on instructions from the Polish
government-in-exile, the Home Army launched a
coordinated uprising against German occupying forces
on Aug. 1.
The Soviet Union’s Red Army was advancing toward
Warsaw. The Germans hoped to stop them at the
Vistula River, on the outskirts of Warsaw, with the
help of defensive fortifications built by Polish
slave labour.
The Warsaw Uprising was designed to deny the Germans
that assistance and to make it more difficult for
the soon-to-arrive Russians to install a communist
government.
Eva Konopacki poses for a photo
in Minto Park in Ottawa on Tuesday.
ASHLEY FRASER/Postmedia
“We were waiting for that day because our
underground activities were all directed to that
moment: when we throw out the Germans,” says
Konopacki, who had secretly trained for years. “I
was Polish, and everyone was taking risks. Everyone
was engaged, it was a national thing.”
The uprising started well for the 50,000-strong Home
Army. The insurgents managed to capture much of the
city within the first three days. But the Germans
brought in reinforcements, while planes and
artillery units bombarded Polish positions.
Backed by tanks and heavy machine guns, German
forces steadily regained territory.
Civilians lived in cellars while resistance fighters
dug trenches to connect buildings and built
barricades against tank incursions.
Russian forces, meanwhile, advanced to the Vistula
River and stopped. Content to let the Home Army
wither so they could more easily install a puppet
regime, the Russians didn’t offer air or ground
support as fighting raged inside nearby Warsaw.
The Allies launched an airlift to resupply the
beleaguered Polish resistance forces from distant
bases in Italy. But the British-led Warsaw Airlift
was largely ineffective since the payloads were
small and the drops inaccurate. Flying long-distance
without the support of fighters, the supply planes
were vulnerable to attack: More than 300 Allied
airmen died in the effort, including a host of
Canadians.
In Konopacki’s section of the city, resistance
fighters used a fortified convent, the Sisters of
Resurrection, as a bulwark against the Germans.
Assigned to a communications unit, Konopacki worked
as a telephone operator and put down phone lines to
establish links between resistance units. She often
had to repair lines broken by relentless shelling.
Food and ammunition grew desperately scarce. The
city was without water or electricity.
“Death became our close companion,” Konopacki said
of the time.
Eventually, so many phone lines were damaged that
her commanding officer decided to use couriers to
communicate with other fighting units. Konopacki
travelled through the stricken city to deliver
messages and served as a guide on a nighttime
mission to an ammunition depot.
The situation grew still more desperate. In late
September, the convent came under assault by German
tanks and ground troops. An artillery shell
collapsed part of the building, severing the only
communication line.
Konopacki’s commander asked for a volunteer to make
contact with the convent’s defenders.
“The officer thought it’s so dangerous that he
cannot order anyone to do it,” Konopacki remembered.
“I knew this place very well. I was restless. I
liked action so I just said, ‘I’ll go.'”
Under fire, she crawled through a trench towards the
convent’s only entrance — a hole in the foundation —
but a German tank was nearby. She waited for it to
fire before skittering through the entrance.
Inside, Konopacki found a “tragic situation” with
many dead and wounded soldiers. She returned to her
commander to report on the critical need for medical
supplies and ammunition.
Later that day, the Home Army’s command decided to
retreat from the convent and Konopacki was sent to
deliver the message. At sunset, she made her way
back to the convent, but she found it eerily quiet
and filled with smoke.
“I realized there was no one there,” she says. The
unit had already retreated.
She went to an adjoining building and discovered two
wounded soldiers in an abandoned coal cellar.
Konopacki found a stretcher and a nurse, and
together they evacuated the men to safety.
Days later, the Home Army negotiated its surrender.
The Poles laid down their arms on Oct. 2.
“We were terribly depressed, devastated,” she said.
Konopacki later received one of the highest honours
available to a Polish soldier when she was inducted
into the Silver Order of the Virtuiti Militari for
“valour in the face of the enemy.” A Polish
historian of the Warsaw Uprising called her actions
“crazy brave.”
It’s estimated that as many as 200,000 people died
during the two-month uprising, the vast majority of
them civilians. The Germans evicted the city’s
650,000 inhabitants and levelled what remained of
Warsaw.
The ruined, empty city was taken by the Soviets in
January 1945.
Konopacki became a prisoner of war and was shipped
to a camp near the village of Oberlangen, in
northern Germany. She was liberated on April 12,
1945.
After the war, Konopacki finished her high school
education in Italy, then won a scholarship from the
Polish government-in-exile. After earning a history
degree from the National University of Ireland, she
obtained her teaching certificate and moved to
Trinidad, where she taught high school.
In February 1954, she immigrated to Montreal, where
she met her future husband, Thaddeus Konopacki, an
architect and a decorated veteran of the Warsaw
Uprising.
After raising four daughters, Konopacki returned to
the classroom as a high school teacher. She worked
for the Ottawa Catholic School Board for two
decades, while also developing a career as an
artist.
Konopacki said Poland’s experience in the Second
World War — “Poland was betrayed,” she said — left
her both with scars and a sense of pride.
“War, it marks you for life,” she said. “But, when
you put your life on the scale, you can be proud of
that.”
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/the-gallant-nine-week-war-of-eva-konopacki
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Piątek, 31 lipca 2020
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