Group’s name recalls Warsaw uprising in 1944

Press, 8 September 1982, Page 8

Group’s name recalls Warsaw uprising in 1944

NZPA Berne Although little is known about the armed men occupying the Polish Embassy in Berne, the “Home Army" label they have attached to their group's name is one of the most evocative in modern Polish history. The Home Army was the backbone of non-Communist resistance to the Nazi occupation of Poland during World War Two, while its Communist counterpart was called the People’s Guard. The Home Army led a bold, bloody, and ultimately unsuccessful uprising in Warsaw in 1944 in a bid to oust the Nazis before the approaching Red Army could capture the city for what the Home Army leadership saw then was a likely future under Communism.

The ill-fated uprising, and the Home Army’s continued guerrilla activity against the Communist Government for several years after the war ended, marked the group as one of the most powerful anti-Communist organisations in Eastern Europe.

The Swiss police say that the full name adopted by the embassy occupiers, “Home Army - Front of National Liberation," was apparently chosen to evoke this memory. Although the group called for an end to martial law and freedom for interned members of the banned Solidarity free trade union, exiled members of the union in Zurich said they knew nothing of ,it. They had no

ties to the group, they said.

The Home Army grew out of a World War Two split between the non-Communist Polish Government-in-exile in London and the Polish Communists exiled in the Soviet Union. Polish Communists formed their force in January, 1942, and the Lon-don-based Government started the Home Army a month later.

With significant parts of the Polish Army fighting with the Allies in the Middle East, Italy, and the Soviet Union, the two groups conducted parallel guerrilla activities against the Nazis in Poland. The Home Army's most daring campaign was the August, 1944. Warsaw uprising. The group’s forces, led by General Tadeusz BorKomorowski, took two-thirds of the city’in the first few days of his campaign, but reinforcements of the German S.S. slowly won back terrain in bloody street-to-street fighting. The Red Army halted on the eastern side of the Vistula River during the fierce fighting, leaving the outnumbered Home Army to capitulate to the Nazis in October.

Many Poles still’ bitterly accuse the Soviet Union of holding back its army to allow the Nazis and the Home Army to fight it out rather than intervene against the German enemy. The seizure of the embassy was the first serious guer-rilla-style attack against

Polish martial law at home or abroad since the clampdown in December. ’

The precise identity of the attackers was not known and no connection was established with Solidarity, which has never advocated violence.

A statement published in the West German magazine. “Der Spiegel," last month, attributed to Adam Michnik. a top dissident and Solidarity adviser interned in Warsaw, said that terrorism should be avoided.

Minor incidents have been reported in Poland, but opposition to martial law has been expressed mainly through street rallies — some peaceful, such as those of May 1, or others which ended in clashes with police, like last week. Earlier this year a leading dissident, Jacek Kuron, smuggled a statement out of prison saying that a wellorganised resistance movement was the only chance for the Polish people. “Only such a movement can be a party to a compromise ... (and) restrain a wave of terrorism.” he wrote. Mr Michnik and Mr Kuron are among other members of the now-disbanded dissident movement, K.0.R., who are to be charged by the authorities with trying to overthrow the State by force. Meanwhile, a 28-year-old miner has died from gunshot wounds in the copper-mining town of Lubin, bringing to

five the number of reported deaths resulting from last week’s demonstrations.