History
The NSZ was created on September 20, 1942, as a result of the merger of the Military Organization Lizard Union (Organizacja Wojskowa Związek Jaszczurczy) and part of the National Military Organization (Narodowa Organizacja Wojskowa). At its maximum strength it reached approximately between 70,000 and 75,000 members, making it the third largest organization of the Polish resistance (after the Armia Krajowa and the Bataliony Chlopskie). NSZ units participated in the Warsaw Uprising.
In March 1944, the NSZ split with the more moderate faction coming under the command of the Armia Krajowa. The other part of the organization became known as the NSZ-ZJ (after "Związek Jaszczurczy" or the "Salamander Union"). This branch of the NSZ conducted operations against Polish and Jewish members of the Polish communist secret police, the Soviet NKVD, SMERSH, and their own former leaders that claimed dozens of victims.
While an article in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust asserts that hundreds of Polish Jews who had sought asylum amongst the Polish population after having escaped from the ghettos were murdered by the NSZ, many NSZ soldiers and their families are credited with saving lives of countless Jews including personalities such as Maria Bernstein, Leon Goldman, Jonte Goldman, Dr. Turski, and others. The NSZ had many Jews in its ranks including Calel Perechodnik, Wiktor Natanson, Captain Roman Born-Bornstein (chief physician of the Chrobry II unit), Jerzy Zmidygier-Konopka, Feliks Pisarewski-Parry, Eljahu (Aleksander) Szandcer (nom de guerre "Dzik"), Dr. Kaminski, a physician who served in the NSZ unit led by Capt. Wladyslaw Kolacinski (nom de guerre "Zbik"), and numerous others. Similarly, a number of prominent members of the National Armed Forces made personal efforts to aid and hide Jews.
In January 1945, the NSZ Holy Cross Mountains Brigade (Brygada Świętokrzyska) retreated before the advancing Red Army, and after negotiating temporary ceasefire with the Germans, moved into the Nazi-controlled (Czech) Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. However, it resumed operations against the Nazis again on May 5, 1945 in Bohemia, where the NSZ brigade liberated prisoners from a concentration camp in Holiszowo, including 280 Jewish women prisoners slated for certain death, as the Nazis intended to burn them alive. The brigade suffered heavy casualties.
In 1947, Maria Bernstein, a Jew who survived Nazi occupation wrote on behalf of an NSZ soldier condemned to death by a communist court, Jerzy Zakulski. Her notorized letter reads: "Jerzy Zakulski, formerly residing with his now deceased father Ludwik, at 7 Saint Kinga Street in Krakow Pogorze, provided me with shelter in his apartment when I escaped with my 3-year old child during a night from the Ghetto After some time they managed to secure a safe place for us at the Zofia Strycharska’s place, where along with my child I survived in Myslenice until the end of the war. I am furnishing this statement under oath, because I am grateful to them for saving my life while endangering their own. (-) Maria Bleszynska (formerly Bernstein) (-) Emil Stapor, Notary." As one of countless NSZ soldiers killed by the communist regime, Zakulski was executed on July 31, 1947.
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—William James (1842–1910)
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“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)