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Polish WWII scouting hero honoured in Warsaw

PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge 07.03.2013 14:14
Late resistance fighter and scouting legend Jan Rodowicz was honoured with a monument in Warsaw on Thursday on the 90th anniversary of his birth.

Today's
Today's unveiling ceremony. photo: PAP/Grzegorz Jakubowski

Resistance veterans joined current soldiers at today's unveiling ceremony in the Urysnow district of southern Warsaw.

The stone-hewn monument adjoins an avenue that was previously named after the scout.

Jan Rodowicz was born in the Polish capital on 7 March 1923 and he was sixteen when World War II broke out in September 1939.

He joined the so-called Grey Ranks (Szare Szeregi) the underground organisation created by members of the pre-war Polish Scouting Association (ZHP).

The Grey Ranks fought in conjunction with the Home Army (AK), the official Polish resistance force backed by the Polish government-in-exile in London.

Rodowicz (codename Anode) was involved in several sabotage actions against the occupying Nazi German regime, later fighting in the doomed 1944 Warsaw Rising as deputy commander of a platoon in the oft-written about Zoska Scouting Battalion.

After the war, Rodowicz fell victim to the Moscow-backed communist regime that took power in Poland. He was arrested in December 1948, and died the following month in captivity following torture.

The new monument was funded through cooperation between the state-backed Office for War Veterans and Victims of Oppression (UDSKIOR) and the Social Committee for the Care of Graves of Fallen Soldiers of the Zoska Battalion. (nh)

Source: PAP

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