Czekaj, Len Memoir of a Polish Resistance Fighter

Defying Nazi and Russian Occupation in World War II

Stanislaw Franciszek Czekaj was born on August 10, 1924. His early years were hard. His father, a war veteran, died the following year, weakened by his imprisonment in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp. Although his paternal grandparents owned some land, it was destroyed by arson, prompting Stans mother to move with him to her own parents' home. They scraped by on a small farm with dirt floors and no electricity. He was only fifteen years old when the Germans invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. He vividly remembers the wars arrivalmarked by the "terrifying roar of aircraft, exploding bombs, and machine-gun fire"as the Luftwaffe attacked the airfield near his village. Under German occupation, Stan and his neighbors suffered from food shortages and the Gestapos reign of terror. Brutality, arbitrary arrests, deportations, and executions were the order of the day; "everyone was afraid to speak in front of strangersfor fear an informer might be presentor even in front of people they knew." At around the age of seventeen, Stan joined the Polish Provisional Brigade (*Brygada Swietokrzyska*) and adopted the codename "Zwierz" (Beast). Caught between two enemies who eventually went to war against each other, his existence was fraught with mortal danger: he fought against the Nazi occupiers andafter they had been driven outresisted the returning Soviets. Stans involvement in numerous operations, including the elimination of informers, led to a bounty being placed on his head"dead or alive." Eventually, he was forced to flee via Germany under the assumed name Stanislaw Wozniak. He recounts his experiences as a refugee, life in the DP camps (for "Displaced Persons"), his time in a Belgian coal mine, and finally his arrival in Great Britain, where he would spend the rest of his life.