Museum "Armii Krajowej" (underground army)

I visited the "underground museum" yesterday. It is located on Wit Stwosz street, near the main train station. It was a little tricky to find as it is off just by itself. Here is what it looks like on the outside.

The museum is in the memory of August Emil Fieldorf (pseudonym Walenty Gdanicki), 1895-1953. The exhibit about him was only in Polish with difficult vocabulary. It was very detailed about his life. I gather that he went through the ranks of the military in Poland, getting very high up. He founded the illegal organization "Nie" (short for niepodleglosci = independence). He served various prison sentences, changed his name and was dodging the authorities. They eventually caught up with him during a random arrest and sentenced him to death by hanging in Warsaw due to his false documents among other things. This was one of the exhibits dealing with the underground movement in Poland. 

The other exhibit about the underground was a temporary one outside about women during the Warsaw uprising. Mostly there were photos and short bios of women who helped the resistance. Many worked in hospitals. Most of them had pseudonyms. There was an ad posted for assistance in finding lodging for soldiers slightly hurt during WWII. They were looking for a free room and eventually an apartment.  There was also a chart of concentration camps where women prisoners were taken from Warsaw after the uprising (mostly to Germany). Here it is. 

The rest of the museum was about Poland before WWII in the 1920s, the years leading up to WWII and during that war. There were old pre-war military uniforms, badges and weapons. There was information about early events in WWII, ie. defense of Polish post office in Gdansk (1939), defense of peninsula Hel (near Gdansk) and Oksywie (on coast), Westerplatte battle and the Red Army crossing into Poland in 1939 (violating a Soviet-Polish non aggression pact made in Moscow in 1932). 

Some interesting things I noted to research when I get home are Nazi action vs. Polish intellectuals, "self defense actions" vs. Poles by 10% of the German minority in Poland, Katyn (Polish military officers murdered one by one in Russian forest), requests by the Ukraine and Belarus to become a part of the Soviet Union and be Soviet citizens (a rigged event), Central Welfare Council to help Poles with basic needs (founded by archbishop Adam Sapieha and supposedly endorsed by the German government), list of Poles of German origin forced to sign document that they are German, children taken away from their parents to be "Germanized", women's auxiliary service and burning down of whole villages in eastern Poland as retaliation or prevention for help given to partisans and underground activists.

Here are photos from the exhibit about WWII. The first is a document stating that the person had been in Dachau concentration camp and was rescued from there by the US army.

Here is another showing a rations card.

Yet another showing work ID during the war.

Lastly a long document stating that the person had been a prisoner at a concentration camp. It was necessary to find witnesses that this person was a POW and those witnesses had to sign the document. These witnesses were fellow POWs. This document may have been used to be eligible for certain benefits after the war (I am thinking). I will have to check on this.