Historia / History

Kurierzy Polskiego Państwa Podziemnego.

Kim byli Kurierzy Polskiego Państwa Podziemnego? Najprościej mówiąc setkami młodych ludzi, którzy przez swoje ciche bohaterstwo przyczynili się do zwycięstwa w II wojnie światowej.

Z narażeniem życia podróżowali po całej Europie dostarczając meldunki wywiadowcze dla państw alianckich o sytuacji w okupowanej przez Niemców Europie, o niemieckich obozach koncentracyjnych, o losach ludności żydowskiej, o nowych wynalazkach niemieckiego przemysłu zbrojeniowego czy w końcu o sile, dyslokacji i planach armii niemieckiej.

Z drugiej strony kurierzy przeprowadzali z terenów okupowanej Polski, przez Słowację i Węgry i dalej do krajów alianckich ludzi zagrożonych w kraju aresztowaniem i śmiercią, ludzi którzy chcieli i później walczyli z Niemcami na wszystkich frontach wojny… pod Narvikiem, Tobrukiem, Monte Cassino, Falaise czy pod Arnhem.

Bez Kurierów Polskiego Państwa Podziemnego zwycięstwo Aliantów w II wojnie światowej mogłoby być jeszcze bardziej krwawe i czasochłonne.

Wacław Szczepanik

18-20
Polish Underground Couriers 1939-1945

In 1939, most of the Polish territory was occupied by the Third Reich. Poles immediately began to struggle against the Nazis. Yet before the final defeat of the September campaign, in besieged Warsaw the conspiracy Service to the Polish Victory. Soon later it was replaced by the Union of Armed Struggle which was, in 1942, renamed to the Home Army, the largest underground conspiracy organization in Europe.

Spectacular battle actions carried out by the soldiers of the Polish underground were certainly an important element in the fight against the Nazi occupiers. However, it is not the spectacular actions to constitute the most important part of the secret war. Much more important was the intelligence activity for the acquisition and transfer of materials to the central decision-making about the location, movements and intentions of the enemy.

One of the elements proving the effectiveness of the intelligence grid of the Polish underground was a daily effort of hundreds of people – couriers who, for many days, with continuous exposing of life were traveling across Europe, carrying a small, but very important parcel, like information about the number of transports of German forces on the individual sections of the front, or reports from munitions factories, or reports about the situation in the concentration camps.

The activities of the Polish underground courier proceeded on two fronts. On the one hand, they were involved in metastasis from the occupied areas of information useful for waging war against the enemies of Polish, the other on extended beyond people at risk for the Polish arrest or death to a safe place.
The second form of activity had a particularly wide range in the pre-war southern border of Poland. In a broad belt of the Carpathians & Beskidy Mountains there was kept a constant movement of people, their way across the borders of the reasons is the direct threat to life or liberty by the occupying regimes, whether from a desire to fight with the enemy in the ranks of the regular army in western Europe.

Not far behind our pre-war border was the first, as far as safe haven for many thousands of numbers of people at risk of staying in the barbaric Nazi occupation, Soviet or even more terrible. After crossing the Carpathians and the defeat of a short segment within the pre-war Czechoslovakia fugitives penetrated the territory of Hungary. There, in a country traditionally friendly to the Poles, got to the internment camps. However, those camps were created solely to meet the demands of formal ally of Hungary – the Third Reich. The inadequacy of their guards and easy escape unsophisticated jokes circulated. Numbered groups of soldiers of the 1939 campaign by Hungary and then through Yugoslavia leaked to the Polish Armed Forces in the West.

Polish Underground Couriers, especially those living in frontier areas, mountains, were perfectly familiar with those people without whom the commitment in metastatis of the people by the „green” („white”) would have not succeeded. Those were couriers, often very young people, who saved many people from death or a long deportation to the „the inhuman land”.

In addition to metastasis of people, couriers were also involved in passing to the Western Allies of operational intelligence reports of the Polish Underground. Special contribution to the victorious end of World War II wasn’t of the military action, led by poorly armed combat units of our underground army, but of the military intelligence operations and the industry one.

Over a period of war, the underground state history interviews of the Western Allies handed over 25 thousand. reports. Those included, inter alia, information on the location and movement of German units or military equipment and materials produced by the Germans in arms factories.

The work of those many anonymous people, now called as couriers by us, became legendary and it’s worth to get as many people as possible to know about their heroism.