ABSTRACT
The Polish units were retreating southwards towards low and the Hungarian border, along the narrow strip of territory left between the German army attacking from the West and the Soviet ‘liberators’ advancing from the East. In the military council chamber, the tribunal was presided over by the regimental politruk (political officer). The Red Army assassins came and went in rapid succession, but there was also a regular ‘local adviser’ in the shape of a young law student called Ettinger, the son of a rich paper-merchant; on the previous day he had become the first commander of the workers’ guard of luck. The Freedom Manifesto then declared that Poland would continue to fight despite her military defeat, and called upon the working masses of Poland to carry on this struggle to ultimate victory, in accordance with the nation’s century-and-a-half-old tradition of fighting for independence and democracy.
