It functioned illegally from that time onwards (during WWII it was recognized for a short period of time by the Polish authorities in exile, but stripped of any meaningful political power and representation in the Polish state institutions).

In Nazi-Soviet occupied Poland a new generation of ONR leaders replaced those who perished, as most of them had. A small secretive group of policy makers, called Grupa Szańca (the Entrenchment Group), had been formed. The political program was changed significantly in order to include some new priorities: fighting the Nazi and Soviet occupants.

While recognizing the superior authority of the Polish government in exile, and sharing the same objectives, Grupa Szańca developed and followed an opposite policy towards soviet Russia, which it considered initially to be Poland's enemy on a par with Nazi Germany, and from the end of 1943 to be Poland's enemy number one.

Grupa Szańca also developed a concept of regaining for Poland her Western and Northern provinces that were lost centuries earlier, thus returning to the Polish-German borders on the Odra - Nysa and Łuzycka Rivers from the times of King Bolesław Chrobry (967 - 1025). The original plans called for taking military control over those territories as soon as it became feasible. However, when it became obvious that the soviet occupation of Central Europe was imminent, those plans had to be abandoned and the burning issue of saving tens of thousands of Polish underground soldiers from the soviet oppressors took precedence.

The military arm of ONR was named Związek Jaszczurczy, or ZJ (the Salamander Association), after a XIV century secret organization which had fought the Order of Teutonic Knights in Pomerania. One of ZJ's most instrumental initiators and its Commander-in-Chief was Lt. (later Col.) Władysław "Jaxa"- Marcinkowski. By the spring of 1942, ZJ numbered 60,000 - 65,000 sworn members in 13 districts covering the entire country. Most of those young people joined ZJ not because of their personal political beliefs (most political views were accepted in ZJ except fascist and communist), but because of the agenda of the organization, patriotic zeal and determination. Most of the members, although in constant readiness, lived ordinary (if this term can be used at all under the circumstances) civilian lives being called up from time to time only to undergo military or other training, or to do a particular task.

The main objectives during the occupation were:
1) to protect the population from harm at the hands of the occupants as much as possible
2) to pursue and eliminate of the collaborators and criminal elements that were taking advantage of the situation in the occupied country
3) to eradicate communist influences and communist (including soviet) bands of plunderers tormenting Polish villages
4) to keep high morale in the population in preparation for the time when its determination supported by ZJ's massive military action would most benefit Poland's National interests.
5) to gather intelligence for the Allies was an important aspect of ZJ activities.

In order to achieve these goals specialized branches of ZJ were created. Printing shops produced numerous newspapers, magazines, military instructions, information, propaganda and educational brochures not only for the internal use by ZJ, but also for other underground organizations. Special attention was paid to the task of generating false identification documents for the members of the organization. ZJ's intelligence network covered Poland's occupied territories and reached deeply into Germany. The results of its data gathering efforts were regularly sent to London via the Home Army channels since Polish Governement in Exile, under political pressure from Allies, refused to recognise NSZ's anti-soviet position. On many occasions the Home Army did not hesitate to take credit for ZJ's achievements in this field. The effectiveness of ZJ's intelligence service prompted the Germans to form a special anti-ZJ counter-intelligence agency.

Akcja Specjalna (Special Action) units of ZJ were responsible for taking from occupents the funds and arms needed by the organization (ZJ, and later NSZ-ZJ have been refused financial support from the Polish government in exile), providing security services to the organization and its undertakings, and also for punishing or eliminating collaborators and criminal elements. For example, my maternal grand-parents, owners of few grain mills near Warsaw, during second part of WW II, when Germans were retreating, regularly demanded weapons as payment for flour pourchassed by german units. Germans never took possession (confiscated) of flour by force even during most difficult times. It was not the case when soviet savages occupied Poland. Soviets and later polish communist poppets confiscated, without compensation all real estate we had. Up to now, we were not compensated thanks to jews in "New" Poland's leadership which blocking passage of laws to that effect. The jews, naturally, were compensated for the properties lost to nazis or soviets. Definitively, the history repeats itself.

Unlike other underground organizations ZJ refrained from performing unwarranted, larger scale military operations and overt acts of sabotage against the Germans (like derailments of German military transport trains heading for the eastern front) for a few well calculated reasons:
1) undisturbed German military activities against Soviet Russia caused significant exhaustion of both Poland's mortal enemies by attrition without spilling Polish blood
2) to preserve Poland's human resources by avoiding severe German retributions (like random mass-executions which claimed thousands of innocent civilian lives; hundreds of villages burnt to the ground) following those often unnecessary, unproductive and sometimes irresponsible activities like the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.

In the Summer of 1942, a merger between ZJ and a part of another military organization, Narodowa Organizacja Wojskowa, or NOW - the National Military Organization, occurred. The newly formed organization took the name Narodowe Siły Zbrojne, or NSZ (National Armed Forces). In March of 1944 a bilateral attempt at merging NSZ and the Home Army was made. That attempt failed, not only because of irreconcilable ideological differences but also due to a lack of good faith on the side of some high ranking Home Army officers during the negotiations. A small part of NSZ joined the Home Army but the core of NSZ retained its independence and the ideals of the Salamander Association, thus the name NSZ-ZJ.

Despite the shortage of weapons and funds necessary in order to field large and effective combat units, in the early months of 1944 numerous NSZ-ZJ field units were in operation, particularly in Central Poland. And despite constant frictions between NSZ-ZJ and the Home Army caused by some high ranking Home Army officers, many forms of cooperation developed between the field unit commanders who often helped each other, planned together and coordinated their military operations against Germans, bands of Soviet-sponsored communist plunderers and ukrainian bands (UPA) responsible for brutal extermination of hundreds of thousands of Poles and Ukrainians in Eastern Poland.

When the Soviets crossed Poland's pre-war borders in their pursuit of the retreating Germans (January, 1944), they and the "Polish government" of their making also began massive and brutal repressions against the Polish underground including the Home Army despite its full cooperation with the Soviets. Thousands were murdered, imprisoned, tortured, and deported. NSZ-ZJ strengthened its defensive activities and turned to fighting actively the soviet aggressor when possible. But as the spread of the Soviet deluge continued and the outcome of the war, for Poland, became clear, NSZ-ZJ began preparations for the final battle - for the life and freedom of its soldiers. In the summer of 1944 concentration and reorganization of the· NSZ-ZJ field units were ordered in Central Poland (Holy Cross Mountains region) and on August 11, 1944 Brygada Świętokrzyska (the Holy Cross Brigade) was born.

The Brigade had been formed from several partisan combat units, which for operational purposes retained their integrity, but also were reorganized to assume a regular army structure of regiments (202 and 204 Infantry Regiments), battalions etc. The Brigade came into existence at a very difficult time for any truly Polish Underground organization.

Half of Poland's pre-war territory was occupied by the Soviets who were executing ruthlessly their policy of extermination. In the vicinity of Poland's capital the German-Soviet front reached the Vistula River - the Soviets watched patiently the agony of the Warsaw Uprising and were in preparation for a winter offensive. The Germans amassed significant defenses in their desperate effort to stop the Soviet advance and made constant attempts to clear the hinterland from any underground activities.

The forests were full of Polish underground combat units: those which called it home, but also those fleeing from the Soviets occupied territories in the east and those marching towards Warsaw in hope to relieve the besieged city. In addition, large detachments of well equipped Soviet partisans, supported by local communist bands, increased their activity significantly and by committing various atrocious acts made clear what their true intentions were. A two regiment strong Brigade numbering close to 1,500 soldiers, artillery and support units could not remain undetected and was like a thorn in the flesh of the Soviets and Germans.

The general direction of the evacuation was Silesia and adjacent, north-western parts of German-occupied Czechoslovakia with the hope that the Western allies could be joined somewhere. The fateful moment came on January 13, when the Soviet Winter Offensive of 1945 began.

On February 8, while still in Lower Silesia the Brigade was joined by some 120 prisoners of war, former Warsaw Uprising fighters, who fled the capture. Marching south the Brigade crossed the Czech border in the Sudety Mountains. Traversing a steep mountain range in wintry conditions seemed to be beyond the ability of poorly clothed, undernourished and battle-weary troops.

The Germans, on April 18, laid an ambush in the vicinity of the town of Tabor. An SS Division was waiting several kilometers ahead, right on the Brigade's route. Thanks to a helping hand from the Czech Underground, the Brigade could change the route and avert the danger.

On May 5, a concentration camp near Holysov was captured. Approximately 700 woman-prisoners of various nationalities were freed; some of them in the last moment before being burnt alive in locked up and barb-wired barracks. Close to 200 SS guards were also captured, summarily jugged and executed.

On May 6 the first patrol of the Gen. Patton's American 3rd Army met with the Brigade. It meant a symbolic end to the almost 1000 kilometer fight for freedom.

George Gnat (Lt. "Gnat") and Ryszard Moszczynski (Sgt. "Ryszard") contributed these illustrations.

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