Stanislaw Sosabowski
Stanisław Franciszek Sosabowski (born May 8, 1892 in Stanislau , Galicia , Austria-Hungary , † September 25, 1967 in Hillingdon , Great Britain ) was a Polish general in World War II .
He was the son of a railroad employee and had four siblings. After graduating from school in 1911, he first became a bank clerk and then joined the Austro-Hungarian army . He experienced the beginning of the First World War in the Austro-Hungarian army . There he took part in the defense of the Lemberg fortress (Polish Lwów ). After the end of the First World War he worked in the newly established Polish Ministry of Defense . From 1923 to 1927 he studied at the General Staff School , where he was also a teacher from 1930 to 1936.
In 1939, after the start of the Second World War , he received the highest Polish military award Virtuti Militari for his services in the defense of Warsaw . After the collapse of Poland, the Polish resistance movement sent him to France via Czechoslovakia . After the defeat of France in 1940, he fled to Great Britain and was stationed in Scotland . There he became the commander of the 1st Polish Airborne Brigade of the Polish Army in Exile .
Operation Market Garden began on September 17, 1944 . The Polish paratrooper brigade under his command did not land until September 20, after the landing had been postponed again and again due to bad weather. Concentrated anti-aircraft fire and low-hanging clouds dispersed the transport machine associations on the banks of the Rhine between Nijmegen and Arnhem . Sosabowski suffered from these experiences all his life. He was blamed by the British generals for the failure of Operation Market Garden and discharged from military service in December 1944. Efforts to rehabilitate him lasted until 2006, when on May 31st that year the Dutch Queen Beatrix awarded General Sosabowski the “ Bronze Lion ” posthumously - a very high honor for military courage and bravery.
After the war
Shortly after the war, Sosabowski was able to bring his wife and son from Poland to England. Like many other Polish officers and soldiers who had served with the Western Allies, he was unable to return to communist Poland, whereupon he settled in west London. He found a job as a factory worker at CAV Electrics in Acton, where he worked until 1967, until he was 75, for lack of a pension. He died on September 25, 1967.
In 1969 his remains were brought to Poland, where he was reburied in the Powazki military cemetery in Warsaw.
Trivia
In the film The Bridge of Arnhem he was played by Gene Hackman .
A street in the Dutch municipality of Driel is named after him; the Sosabowskiplein.
Web links
- Literature by and about Stanisław Sosabowski in the catalog of the German National Library
- http://sosabowski.com/general-stanislaw.html Stanisław Sosabowski's curriculum vitae of his grandson a. a., in English
- http://www.polandinexile.com/sosa.htm Biography in English
- http://www.rememberseptember44.com/ about Operation Market Garden, in English, by Roel Kerkhoff
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Sosabowski, Stanisław |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Sosabowski, Stanisław Franciszek (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Polish general in World War II |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 8, 1892 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Stanislau , Galicia , Austria-Hungary |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 25, 1967 |
| Place of death | Hillingdon , UK |