page_title: Jan Mazurkiewicz
section_title: World War II and Warsaw Uprising
hierarchical_section_title: Jan Mazurkiewicz / World War II and Warsaw Uprising
caption_attribution_description: English: WarsawUprising: Commander of "Radosław" Regiment, and Kedyw Colonel . Jan Mazurkiewicz "Radosław" (standing sideways) in Wola district. Sitting on the chair is his wife capitan Anna Mazurkiewicz "Irma" – commandant of liaison officers. Polski: Powstanie Warszawskie: Dowódca zgrupowania "Radosław", szef sztabu Kedywu KG AK Ppłk. Jan Mazurkiewicz "Radosław" (stojący bokiem) na Woli. Na krześle siedzi jego żona kpt. Anna Mazurkiewicz "Irma" - komendantka łączniczek sztabu. Zdjęcie z ulicy Okopowej.
context_page_description: Jan Mazurkiewicz, pseudonym: "Zagłoba", "Socha", "Sęp", "Radosław" was a Polish military leader and politician, colonel of Home Army and brigadier general of the Polish People's Army. Founder of the Secret Military Organization, commander of Kedyw and the Radosław Group during Warsaw Uprising. After the war, he was a political prisoner of the Stalinist period. From 1964 he was vice-president of Society of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy.
context_section_description: During the Invasion of Poland, he was the head of a diversion on the southwestern front section. After the Soviet invasion of Poland, he founded the Secret Military Organization (TOW) in Stanisławów. On 19 September 1939, he crossed the Polish-Hungarian border, transferring the organization's headquarters to Budapest. Then he went to France, where he met with general Władysław Sikorski. In June 1940 he returned to the country and assumed the function of the Commander-in-Chief of TOW, an independent combat and subversive organization operating according to the guidelines of the Union of Armed Struggle.
  
  In March 1943, after merging TOW with Kedyw he became the deputy head of the organization, colonel Emil August Fieldorf. On 1 February 1944, he took the post of commander of Kedyw.
  Shortly before the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, Mazurkiewicz was made commander of the Radosław Group. This force was one of the largest, best trained and equipped Polish units in the uprising. After the initiation of the uprising, the unit seized major portions of the Wola suburbs, and subsequently defended it against German attacks carried out by troops under the command of SS Gruppenführer Heinz Reinefarth and Standartenführer Oskar Dirlewanger. One of the battalions of the group, Battalion Zośka, liberated the Gęsiówka concentration camp located within Warsaw, and freed 384 prisoners (mainly Jews), most of whom then joined the unit. The Radosław Group fought its way to Warsaw Old Town borough, when further defense in Wola became impossible. In the areas of Wola that Reinefarth's and Dirlewanger's troops recaptured from the insurgents, at least 40,000 civilians and prisoners of war were murdered in the Wola massacre. On 11 August he was seriously wounded during the fighting
  On 15 September 1944, he sent his liaison officer to the east bank of the Vistula in order to establish contact with the troops of the First Polish Army. In the absence of sufficient assistance on their part, on 20 September he ordered his decimated units to leave Czerniaków and pass through the sewers to Mokotów. He left his soldiers a free hand - they could decide whether they would go to German captivity or leave the city with the civilian population. Shortly before the order was signed, Mazurkiewicz was officially promoted to the rank of colonel, by general Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, the commander of the uprising.
  He did not go into captivity, he left the ruins of the destroyed capital with his wife. He continued his underground activity in Częstochowa, where the headquarters of Home Army was located.
caption: Jan Mazurkiewicz "Radosław" (standing sideways) in Wola.  Sitting on the chair is his wife Anna Mazurkiewicz "Irma"
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