On May 25, Edmund Semrau, one of the last soldiers of the 1st Polish Armored Division of General Stanisław Maczek passed away.

On May 25, Edmund Semrau, one of the last soldiers of the 1st Polish Armored Division of General Stanisław Maczek passed away.

Capt. Edmund Semrau was born on January 21, 1926, in Chełmno. In September 1939 he and his family were evacuated to the eastern borderlands of Poland, later after 17 September, he was deported to Siberia with his family.

Thanks to the Sikorski - Majski agreement taken over in July 1941, after long wandering, he came with many soldiers of General Anders to the British Isles to Scotland. As soon as he reached the age of majority in 1943, he volunteered to serve in the 1st Polish Armored Division created by General Maczek. He received specialized training at the Armored Weapons Training Center in Catterick. After receiving the assignment to the 2nd Squadron of the 1st Armored Regiment, he went through his entire battle trail from the fields of Normandy, through France, Belgium, and the Netherlands to the winning final in Germany.

In August 1944 he took part in a landing in Normandy, later in the Battle of Falaise, and then in the capture of Breda in the Netherlands. Then his unit was part of the occupation forces in Germany. Semrau returned to Poland in 1948 for family reasons. From 1995, he was active in the "Toruń" Peasant Circle of former soldiers of the 1st Armored Division.

Photo Credit: e-chelmno.pl, ismr.pl
via: Federacja Organizacji Polskich Pancerniaków


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Woolly mammoth

Image
***Farmer finds woolly mammoth bones in Michigan field, stashed by Ancient Natives*** Though buried for thousands of years, the partial skeleton of a woolly mammoth found in Lima Township indicates that the animal actually ended up on the dinner plate of a Native American. “It’s too early to tell how it died but the skeleton showed signs of butchering,” said Professor Dan Fisher of the Museum of Paleontology at the University of Michigan. The remains were found by James Bristle, on the soy bean farm that was owned by him. When he first encountered the remains, he thought it was an old fence post, but it turned out to be about 20 percent of a woolly mammoth, including the skull, jaw, vertebrae and ribs, that died between 11,000 and 15,000 years ago. The site holds “excellent evidence of human activity,” Fisher said. “We think that humans were here and may have butchered and stashed the meat so that they could come back later for it.” Mammoths and mastodons — another extinct elephant-lik
Read more

The first case of shell-shock

Image
"It was while I was in this Field Hospital that I saw the first case of shell-shock. The enemy opened fire about dinner time, as usual, with his big guns. As soon as the first shell came over, the shell-shock case nearly went mad. He screamed and raved, and it took eight men to hold him down on the stretcher. With every shell he would go into a fit of screaming and fight to get away. A much larger number of soldiers with these symptoms were classified as 'malingerers' and sent back to the front-line. In some cases men committed suicide. Others broke down under the pressure and refused to obey the orders of their officers. Some responded to the pressures of shell-shock by deserting. Sometimes soldiers who disobeyed orders got shot on the spot. In some cases, soldiers were court-martialled. It is heartbreaking to watch a shell-shock case. The terror is indescribable. The flesh on their faces shakes in fear, and their teeth continually chatter. Shell-shock was brought about i
Read more

Polish war hero Witold Pilecki was executed

Image
Polish war hero Witold Pilecki was executed  On May 25, 1948, Witold Pilecki was executed by communist authorities, in the Rakowiecka detention center after a show trial.  During World War II, Pilecki volunteered for a Polish resistance operation that involved being imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp in order to gather intelligence. At Auschwitz, he organized a resistance movement within the camp which eventually numbered in the hundreds, and secretly sent messages to the Western Allies detailing Nazi atrocities at the camp. He escaped in April 1943 after nearly 2½ years of imprisonment. Pilecki later fought in the Warsaw Uprising from August to October 1944. He remained loyal to the London-based Polish government in-exile after the communist takeover of Poland. In 1947, he was arrested by the secret police on charges of working for "foreign imperialism" (referring to his work for British intelligence). Pilecki was executed after a show trial in 1948. The story of
Read more