War memorial in my father’s village of Niedzieliska

Two rows of neatly trimmed hedges run alongside a gray cobblestone path leading towards the entrance. Beyond a pair of wrought iron gates lay scores of graves, closely arranged, and decorated with grave lanterns and flowers. At the center of this space is a memorial, dedicated to residents who perished in past wars. This is the cemetery in my father’s village of Niedzieliska- my family’s home for over a century.

Niedzieliska’s monument to its fallen veterans

Inside the cemetery of Niedzieliska, a quiet village between the cities of Krakow and Tarnow, is a war memorial, commemorating residents who lost their lives while in military service. Dedicated in 2006, the memorial features an upright black stone monument in the shape of an open book. Inscribed upon it in gold lettering is an epitaph and thirty-six names. Behind stands a large wood cross.

The inscription begins with ‘to the inhabitants of the village of Niedzieliska‘. What follows is the list of names, organized by the war in which they perished: thirty-one in the First World War, four during the Polish-Soviet War, and just one in the Second World War. Appearing in the top-right corner is the Polish eagle with the words God, Honour, and Fatherland. The epitaph concludes with ‘may they rest in internal peace, Lord’:

Poległym 
 Mieszkańcom Wsi
Niedzieliska
[List of names follows]
Niech Spoczną 
W Pokoju Wieczystym Panie

Rather telling of the horrors of the First World War are the losses that Niedzieliska suffered. For a village that had a population of 1,165 inhabitants in 1900, the loss of thirty-one men amounted to approximately 2.7% of the entire population.¹ Considering that roughly half of the residents were male, and not all had been mobilized, over 10% of the men that went off to war never returned. Further devastating was the loss of multiple men in one family. On the memorial there are seven surnames that appear more than once.

Just as traumatic for the small farming community as the First World War was the Second. Despite only one resident listed as having died while in military service from 1939 to 1945, several others did not return home. Not mentioned are the names of Józef Król or Jan Wróbel, who were both in captivity, or resistance fighter Władysław Klich.² In addition to the military losses there is the civilian populace to consider. Countless residents were deported to Nazi Germany as forced laborers, or were arrested and imprisoned.

All together the trauma of three wars, all within half a century, left a deep and lasting impression on the residents of Niedzieliska. They chose to situate their war memorial in the center of the parish cemetery, the path leading to it beautifully lined with hedges. Locals regularly visit it to pay homage and leave behind offerings like flowers and memorial lanterns.

Names of the fallen soldiers as it appears on the monument:³

Major Józef Kiczka and his fate at Katyn

One resident whose name appears on the memorial for the Second World War is Józef Kiczka. Born on 23 February 1895, to Szymon and Łucja Kiczka, in Niedzieliska, Józef left behind village life for higher education. He completed primary school and attended the gymnasium in Bochnia. Then came the First World War and in 1916, Józef embarked on a career on the military which would take him far and wide across Europe.⁴

Józef became commissioned as an ensign in the Austro-Hungarian army, Poland did not exist as a state at that time, and saw service on the Italian Front. There in the mountains of northeast Italy he was captured and sent to an Allied prisoner of war camp. Before war’s end he left captivity albeit to France instead of his homeland, answering a call to join a legion of his fellow countrymen.

The Blue Army, also known as Haller’s Army, after its commander, Józef Haller, was a Polish military formation established by the Allies in France. Formed in 1917, it was a unique volunteer force whose aim was to fight for Polish independence. Amongst its ranks were former prisoners of war, captured Polish soldiers from the Austro-Hungarian and German armies, Poles already serving in the French military, and volunteers from abroad- mainly North America. The force numbered approximately 68,000 soldiers by early 1919.

To this formation Józef Kiczka reported on 5 November 1918. The following Spring the Blue Army travelled across Germany in boxed railcars to reach a newly independent Poland. Integrated into the regular Polish Army, Haller’s soldiers went on to fight in the Polish-Ukrainian War and the Polish-Soviet War. It was in the latter conflict that Kiczka distinguished himself in combat.

At the Battle of Bar, in present-day Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine, Kiczka served as a lieutenant in the 52nd Infantry Regiment. Tasked with assaulting a bridge defended by Soviet troops, he saw the attack falter and rallied the men around him. Together they pushed forward, seizing the bridge and the machine guns covering it, and then entered Bar. His outstanding courage and bravery that day earned him the Virtuti Militari– Poland’s highest military decoration.⁶

The officer from Niedzieliska remained in the army postwar as a career soldier. Promoted to major, he held several assignments until returning to the 52nd Infantry in 1936. With his old unit Kiczka once more faced the Soviets but this time, the outcome was different.

Seventeen days after Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland, the Soviet Union invaded Eastern Poland on 17 September 1939. By then a considerable amount of Polish troops had fallen back to the hills and rivers of south-east Poland, its national redoubt, where they could potentially hold off the Germans until Allied forces came to help. The Soviet invasion, however, dashed any hopes for victory and with nowhere to escape, Polish forces surrendered in droves. Marching into captivity on 23 September was the 52nd Infantry. A grim fate awaited many of its officers.

In April and May 1940 the NKVD, the internal ministry of the Soviet Union, carried out the execution of nearly 22,000 Polish captives. As military officers, police officers, and members of the intelligentsia, the Soviet authorities considered these men and women as threats to communist rule in Poland. The executions took place at several locations but are collectively known as the Katyn massacre.

The fate of the murdered prisoners remained a mystery to their friends and family for over three years. Ironically, Nazi German authorities discovered the Polish graves and began exhuming the corpses in April 1943. They in turn invited Polish delegates to examine the graves in a highly publicized propaganda ploy. Following the delegates’ return to Warsaw, they debriefed the commander-in-chief of the Polish Home Army, General Stefan Rowecki, who in turn sent reports to the Polish government-in-exile in London. In one of those early reports, dated 22 April, Kiczka’s name appears on a list of identified victims. He was shot in the back of his head.⁷

To read about another Polish army major, retired, from a neighboring village who was also murdered in the war, click here.

1. The 1900 census for Niedzieliska, as well as surrounding communities, is found in Józefa Hampla, editor, Szczurowa: z dziejów wsi i gminy [in Polish] (Kraków: Wydawnictwo i Drukarnia Secesja, 1996), p.209.
2. A list of names of local residents killed during the war, and those from surrounding villages, is found in Hampla, Szczurowa: z dziejów wsi i gminy, pp.425-7.
3. Some of the names on the memorial do not match the names of killed residents in a list published in an older local history. Antoni Bylica is recorded in the history as simply Belica, and there is no Jan Budek but instead Józef Budek. Błażej Skura is Jan Skura. Finally, Józef Daniel appears as Jan Daniel. See previous note for source.
4. A brief biography of Kiczka was published in a regional magazine. See ‘Bohater wojny polsko-bolszewickiej’ [in Polish], in W Zakolu Raby i Wisły, vol.26, no.4 (2017), pp.34-5. Viewed at: https://gck-szczurowa.pl/pdf/zakole_grudzien_2017_arch.pdf (accessed 20 October 2022).
5. This photo was published in ‘Bohater wojny’, in W Zakolu Raby i Wisły, p.34.
6. Kiczka received Virtuti Militari, 5th Class, no.703. An entry under his name appears in a biography of Virtuti Militari recipients killed in the Katyn Massacre. See Kazimierz Banaszek, et al., Kawalerowie Orderu Virtuti Militari w mogiłach katyńskich [in Polish] (Warsaw: Kapituła Orderu Wojennego Virtuti Militari, 2000), p.130.
7. United States, The Katyn Forest Massacre: Hearings Before the Select Committee to Conduct an Investigation of the Facts Evidence and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre Eighty-Second Congress First[-Second] Session on Investigation of the Murder of Thousands of Polish Officers in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk Russia (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952), p.714. Viewed at: https://archive.org/details/katynforestmassa04unit/page/714/mode/2up?q=Kiczka (accessed 29 October 2022).