By Devil's Luck: A Tale of Resistance in Wartime Warsaw

by StanislawLikiernik (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2001

  $3.36

  Born into one of the most chaotic times in Europe in the 20th century, Stanislaw Likiernik was just a schoolboy when, in 1939, Poland fell to two dictatorships - Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union. His happy and secure childhood in and around Warsaw ended with the sound of German jackboots on the streets of the occupied city. A life of clandestine activity began. The German plan was to turn Poland into a slave nation, so all education past the elementary level was prohibited. The Poles responded by creating a whole network of underground schools and universities, not to mention the whole network of clandestine armed resistance units. Stanislaw became a student and then a soldier of the underground, joining the KEDYW (Directorate of Sabotage) select unit and specialising in acts of sabotage against the occupying forces. On 1 August 1944 the underground Home Army called for an uprising and there began two months of heroic street battles against the immeasurably stronger enemy. Stanislaw, by now a second lieutenant, took part in the fighting in Warsaw. Wounded several times, he kept rejoining what was left of his unit, until eventually the fall of the Warsaw Rising found him immobilised in a makeshift hospital. The terrible realities of life during the war are depicted in these memoirs. It is the story of survival against the odds. Stanislaw is one of the lucky ones who made it.