Marcin Rupniak

September Campaign

1st Polish Armoured Division

Marcin Rupniak fought in the September Campaign in Poland and was twice recommended for the Virtuti Militari Cross during the 1939 September Campaign in Poland. He had shown great courage and leadership by firing on advancing German tanks from an exposed position, forcing them to retreat. During intense fighting, he had maintained command of anti-tank guns and took over communications when his telephone operator was killed. His cool head in the thick of battle won him the respect of his men and his superiors.

Marcin evacuated to Hungary and made his way to England, where he joined the 1st Polish Armoured Division.

The evacuation left Polish civilians, including his family, defenseless against the brutal German and Russian invaders. My grandmother Maria and 3 uncles were deported to Siberia in April 1940 because her son Marcin was an officer in the Polish army – only one uncle survived (Jozef).

Armed Soviet Soldiers had come in the dead of night to arrest my grandmother Maria (68) and her sons Ludwik (44), Michał (33), and Józef (17). They were taken to the nearest railway station, where the men were separated and sent to hard labor camps. Józef and Ludwik were sent to a timber logging camp in the Pechora Basin near the Arctic Circle. While working in the forests felling trees, Ludwik was killed by a bear. The death toll from starvation, cold, and disease was so high (out of 7,500 only 250 survived), that Józef knew he would also die unless he escaped. A locksmith by trade, the guards made use of him to repair locks at the perimeter gates. Twice, he broke out but was recaptured. Subjected to brutal beatings by the guards, he almost died. On his third attempt, he succeeded.

Jozef spent days running from the camp, then collapsed and would have died except for the kindness of a hunter (probably an Indigenous Nemet nomad) who gave him shelter and food. The hunter introduced Jozef to other people who helped him on his journey. Jozef managed to reach a Polish Army recruitment center in the southern USSR and enlisted.

It is not known where Michal was sent when he had been separated from his brothers, but Michal also enlisted as a Corporal in the 7th Infantry Division.

The army went to Tashkent, Uzbekhistan, by train and stayed there a few months before evacuating to Persia (Iran).

When Hitler ordered an invasion of the Soviet Union, the Polish president, Władysław Sikorski, worked to secure the release of the prisoners in the USSR to form an army against Hitler. Stalin agreed, but only one tenth of the Poles were released and evacuated to safety in Iran, which was under British control.

The evacuees were in appalling physical condition, emaciated by starvation, infested with parasites, and dying of typhus and other epidemics. Miraculously, my grandmother and her sons, Michał and Józef, reached Iran, but soon after their arrival, she and Michał died in a military hospital in Teheran. Michal was 37 years old.

Józef, the only survivor, later served with distinction at Monte Cassino. He served as a Rifleman (Service number 1920/20) and was awarded the Monte Cassino Cross # 20516 and the Cross of Valour. After the war, he settled in Canada, where he worked as a mechanic at Humber College in Toronto.

Jozef Rupniak

In Iran, the Poles were ordered by their British overseers not to divulge their treatment in the Soviet Union, blackmailed into silence to protect their families in occupied Poland and the prisoners still held in Siberia.12 The letters of Polish servicemen were censored for content criticizing the Soviet Union and soldiers were threatened with imprisonment if they spoke out. Polish leaders received repeated assurances from American and British politicians that in return for their army’s loyal service, their country would be liberated.

In 1944, Marcin Rupniak, with the 1st Polish Armoured Division, fought alongside their allies in Europe under great psychological duress, not knowing the fate of their loved ones in Poland. Pursuing the fleeing German Army, the Poles constructed bridges across rivers and canals, naming them after Warsaw and other Polish cities. Each country they liberated brought them a step closer to home. In France, Belgium, and Holland they were mobbed by jubilant crowds celebrating freedom.

When the Polish Army got as far as Germany, only a few hundred miles from the Polish border, they were given orders to halt. The war was over. During secret meetings, the political leaders of America and Britain had ceded half of Poland to the Soviet Union. The effect on the Polish troops was devastating. My father’s letters speak of betrayal and deceit, indicating that he felt “utterly broken and destroyed.” Some Polish officers committed suicide.

The deportation of whole families from Poland to Siberia continued and this was why my father, Marcin, would not talk about the war. He couldn’t risk any criticism or opposition of the Soviet Union, even from abroad, that might compromise his surviving family’s safety.

If you would like to read her family’s experiences during the war, please visit www.nadiarupniak.com