Insurgents' accounts of the Uprising

Wartime memories of Marek Tadeusz Nowakowski - a soldier of Lawa's unit

Marek Tadeusz Nowakowski, born 01.04.1926 r. in Warsaw 2nd Lieutenant (wartime commission), Home Army nom de guerre "Abba" Protection unit of the Home Army Air Force Command - Lawa's company POW No. 102331

         We present the series of narratives which chronicle wartime memories of Marek Tadeusz Nowakowski nom de guerre 'Abba', a soldier of the Home Army.
         Born in 1926, a native of Warsaw, Mr Nowakowski was 13 when the war broke out. The story of his life is typical of his generation: he takes part in underground education, joins the resistance, fights against Germans during the Warsaw Uprising, receives a battlefield commission to 2nd Lieutenant. After the fall of the Uprising he is imprisoned in a POW camp. Liberated by Allied troops, he joins the Polish 2nd Corps commanded by Gen. Anders and studies in Rome and England. In 1947 he decided to come back to Poland. Many of his friends chose the life of emigrants.
         The cycle opens with an interesting chronology of the war years beginning in 1939 and ending in 1944 (the outbreak of the Uprising). This day-by-day account describe events belonging to three historical planes: the author's personal history, the collective experience of Varsovians living in the occupied city and the general history of WWII. It reveals many little known details of everyday life in the occupied Warsaw. It also shows how with each passing days the Nazis tightened the grip of their terror on city.