ROEFLER, Irmina (#177)

Alan Pollock’s Rough Notes:

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Mrs Irmina ROEFLER (née RUNO), in 1944 still in her teens, was an AK COURIER and represents all POLISH WOMEN, the triumphs and tragedies of POLAND, the POLISH HOME ARMY (ARMII KRAJOWEJ) and the AK’s RESISTANCE, specifically for her 80,000 comrades-in-arms during the heroic but doomed WARSAW UPRISING & the BATTLE OF WARSAW 1 Aug – 3 Oct 1944, so subverted by the calculated ruthlessness of the Red Army and Stalin to prevent ALLIED SUPPORT, even BY AIR until 18 Sep – just as at KATYN, Stalin would rid any new regime in advance of POLAND’s most independent nationalists: 85% buildings were damaged and many of General BOR-KOMOROWSKI’s AK survivors would face doubtful futures in German concentration camps.

This became the longest POLISH STRUGGLE of WW2, ending in a bitter catastrophe, apart from upholding POLAND’s honour & fighting prestige – excepting the Holocaust and the German subjugation of much of European Russia, WARSAW was the most brutal German pacification act in one place at one time – in 63 days’ fighting, 18,000 POLISH PARTISANS were killed & 25,000 injured, with 200,000 civilians eventually dying, many more than in the Sep39 German invasion, which began WW2.