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Jan Józef Lipski - Resisting the Nazi occupation of Poland (4/215)

632 views · Published 25 October 2017 · 5:24 · Indexed 22 September 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · News & Politics

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Jan Józef Lipski (1926-1991) was a writer, literary critic, and one of Poland's best known political activists. He fought in the Warsaw Uprising, co-founded the Workers' Defence Committee (KOR), and, from 1987, re-established and led the Polish Socialist Party. [Listener: Jacek Petrycki, Marcel Łoziński; date recorded: 1989]

TRANSCRIPT: Finally, having turned 16, I found myself in the resistance movement, the Grey Ranks. That's when work in the resistance began. There were all kinds of training as well as petty sabotage, chalk graffiti, painting and chalking the symbol of fighting Poland or other drawing on the walls. For example, a gallows with Hitler's head hanging from them, or other games of that kind, a bit risky, but a boy of that age isn't so easy to catch, really. As long as he's careful and not a twerp. There was a time when I could run fast, for example – that can be very handy. So that was how we amused ourselves with this petty sabotage. For boys like us there was a serious element in all of this by its very nature, born both of the risk involved and the fact that we were doing this for Poland. Nevertheless, more than anything, there was a spirit of fun running through this.

After a while, my friends and I grew tired of Grey Ranks but that was because we'd found a different group of friends elsewhere. We had moved across to what at that time was the Battalion Staff Headquarters of the Home Army, otherwise known as Baszta. Later, this battalion became a regiment, it was the battalion that defended Headquarters. This meant it wasn't so much a question of carrying out operations but of protecting certain objects, providing cover. There was intensive training but I never took part in any combat operations. That was done by Kedyw [Kierownictwo Dywersji (Directorate for Diversion)] and sometimes by our friends from Baszta, but those were small, designated groups, small units which had specific tasks to carry out. For example, a couple of my friends participated in setting fire to the warehouses at the railway station in Gdańsk, but I never took part in that type of operation. And so this was how it was up until the uprising, between the clandestine classes, first middle then upper secondary school. Regarding the resistance, well, I managed to survive somehow with no... without any adventures such as being caught during a round-up which would have meant my parents having to buy me out. We were hungry because even a headmaster's salary was inadequate in proportion to the price of everything, so we were hungry at home but we were happy because we believed that this would change, that we'd win, that we'd be victorious. We were among people who all thought the same. We read masses of different types of newspapers – someone even tried once to recruit me into the People's Guard.

My sister knew Hanka Szapirówna – she doesn't like to call her Hanka Sawicka because when she was Sawicka , her name was Krysia, but when she used her real name - Hanka - then she was Szapirówna. At that time, she was a communist activist and was in the PPR [Polska Partia Robotnicza (Polish Workers' Party)] and the People's Guard and the ZMP [Związek Młodzieży Polskiej (Polish Youth Union)]. She said to me, ‘Jasiu, you've got left-wing views’. I'd developed these views quite early on, and it's true they were left-wing and socio-democratic. I was a supporter of PPS [Polska Partia Socjalistyczna (Polish Socialist Party)] even before the war. ‘So you've got left-wing views which means you ought to be with us’. ‘Who's ’us’’, I said, ‘the communists? With communists?’ I said, ‘those who are occupying Lviv and Vilnius? Are you mad?’ So in the end nothing came of this. Although I have to say that I was able to see that the co-operation in those lower ranks was exemplary. For example, Hanka Sawicka had a... I said Hanka Sawicka, Hanka Szapirowa had a hideout on Królewska Street where ammunition was stored for the Madagaskar regiment and at the same time, my sister worked there as an official in that company. I saw how people worked together pretty harmoniously during that night of the occupation. So that's all that there was during the war, you could say, after which came the uprising.

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