That the Nightingale Return: Memoir of the Polish Resistance, the Warsaw Uprising and German P.O.W. Camps [Hardcover]

Leokadia Rowinska (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1999 | ISBN-10: 0786405139 | ISBN-13: 978-0786405138

On August 1, 1944, Leokadia Rowinski and fellow members of the Polish Resistance movement saw the culmination of their five years of training-the Warsaw Uprising. Six weeks later, she celebrated her twenty-first birthday. As a member of the Resistance, Rowinski witnessed firsthand the devastation that World War II brought to Poland. She provided communication services for the Resistance, delivering orders to Resistance leaders. She was captured after the Uprising and spent six months in P.O.W. camps before being liberated.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"a moving story, with family photographs showing six generations of the author's kin" -- The Sarmatian Review

"poignant...a vivid reminder of the horror inflicted upon Poland in World War II and beyond" -- Polish Heritage

About the Author

Leokadia Rowinski emigrated to the United States in 1951. Now retired, she lives in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 172 pages
• Publisher: Mcfarland & Co Inc Pub (January 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786405139
• ISBN-13: 978-0786405138
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,183,289 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Includes the "Mundane" Aspects of WWII Polish Underground Involvement, December 9, 2009

By 

Jan Peczkis "Scholar and Thinker" (Chicago IL, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: That the Nightingale Return: Memoir of the Polish Resistance, the Warsaw Uprising and German P.O.W. Camps (Hardcover)

The author begins with her mother, and life under Russian rule before WWI. She writes: "There were no regular schools at the time in Warsaw or anywhere else in the Russian-occupied part of Poland. All schools, except the official Russian ones where the Polish language was prohibited, were closed down. Only Polish trade schools were allowed to function, but they were watched closely for any rule transgressions and any sign of lack of loyalty to the czar [tsar] and Mother Russia." (pp. 27-28).

Fast forward to WWII. The German occupation was characterized by massive arrests, executions, and closing of Polish educational institutions. (p. 54). Rowinski recounts her clandestine education in the Underground school system. (p. 55). Her role in the Underground included work as a nurse, and first learning and then training others in radio communication. She also had to deliver clandestine goods, such as the red-and-white armbands of the Polish Underground. (p. 65). She also smuggled disguised arms, using coded language to do so. (p. 65). Her job also included spying on a person suspected of being a German informer, in preparation of Underground involvement against him. (p. 66).

This memoir focuses on the day-to-day aspects of Underground involvement during the German occupation of Poland. The author was situated in Warsaw. She emphasizes personal reflections, celebrations of Easter and Christmas with family, etc. She repeatedly expressed grief over friends and relatives that had been murdered by the Germans.

Otherwise, Rowinski comments: "During the five years of the German occupation, many young people had vowed not to dance and had stopped going to parties and movies. It was a form of self-imposed national mourning, and I and most of my friends had adhered to this pledge." (p. 140).

The author participated in the Warsaw Uprising. She recounts how the Germans used Polish civilian hostages as shields around their tanks. The hostages yelled for the Poles to fire anyway. (p. 77).

The Uprising failed as a result of Soviet perfidy. Owing to the fact that the Home Army (AK, or A. K.) was belatedly afforded combatant status by the Germans [probably to induce it to surrender], Leokadia Rowinski became a POW. She was incarcerated in German camps such as Fallingbostel and Oberlangen. She recounts the horrible privations, and German enticements for the POWs to declare themselves civilians (so that they could be slowly killed in concentration camps).

Once liberated by the advancing western Allies, including the Polish Army of General Maczek (p. 132), she and the other incarcerated Warsaw fighters met with Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski, the newly-released Commander of the Soviet-betrayed Uprising. (pp. 136-137). The newfound freedom was bittersweet. Thanks to the Churchill-Roosevelt sellout of Poland at Teheran and Yalta, Poland was under Soviet rule. The AK soldiers had to decide whether or not to return to Poland with its Communist puppet state--a place where they were likely to face arrests, prison, or death. She decided to do so. Fortunately, she lived to see the fall of Communism.