Polish flag over the Berlin Victory Column on May 2, 1945 - Instytut Pileckiego

The 1st Tadeusz Kościuszko Infantry Division was part of General Zygmunt Berling’s army created in the Soviet Union in 1943 by a decision of Joseph Stalin. Its command, political and educational corps were dominated by Soviet officers, Polish communists and their collaborators, who were preparing to take over Poland. Private soldiers were initially recruited mainly from among Poles deported deep into the Soviet Union from the occupied Polish eastern territories. These were people for whom fighting in the ranks of Berling’s army was a chance to escape the USSR and undertake armed resistance to the Third Reich. They often paid the highest price for this opportunity, dying by the thousands on the hellish Eastern Front.

The Red Army command greatly desired the participation of Poles in the capture of Berlin; they wanted in this way to demonstrate the Polish-Soviet brotherhood of arms and strengthen the legitimacy of the emerging communist Poland based on a joint struggle against Nazism at the side of the USSR. At the same time, in the eyes of rank-and-file soldiers, the battle for Berlin marked the symbolic end of hostilities in the capital of a regime that had been responsible for aggression against their homeland six years earlier.

On the morning of 2 May 1945, a group of Polish soldiers from the 1st Tadeusz Kościuszko Infantry Division hung the red-and-white flag atop the Victory Column, a symbolic act that highlighted Poland’s contribution in the defeat of Nazi Germany. By hanging the Polish flag in conquered Berlin, rank-and-file Polish soldiers fulfilled the dreams of many compatriots who had been fighting on all fronts of the Second World War since 1939. Determining who exactly was responsible for hanging the flag has been a matter of debate over the years, however, it was most likely Lt. Mikołaj Troicki, Platoon Sergeant Kazimierz Otap, Cpl. Antoni Jabłoński, and Gunners Eugeniusz Mierzejewski and Aleksander Karpowicz. Their experiences, including deportation to the USSR and participation in defensive battles in September 1939, epitomized the fate of a section of Polish society during the war.

In 1945, Polish soldiers fought to the west and northwest of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. The combat unfolded in the districts of Charlottenburg and Tiergarten, near the Technical University, the Tiergarten S-Bahn station, the Charlottenburg Gate, the German Opera, and Karl-August-Platz.

For many years after the war, their role in the battle for the German capital went unrecognized. It was not until 1 September 2021 that a Monument to Polish Liberators was unveiled at Ernst-Reuter-Platz, beside the Technical University campus. The monument honors the male and female soldiers of the First Polish Army who took part in the battle for Berlin.

Earlier, during the Cold War, the Memorial to Polish Soldiers and German Anti-Fascists was inaugurated in 1972 in Friedrichshain Park, located in East Berlin – the capital of the former German Democratic Republic. This memorial reflected the East German and Polish communist governments’ desire to commemorate communist fighters who resisted the Third Reich. In 1995, a plaque was added to the site to dedicate it to all Polish soldiers who fought on various fronts during the Second World War, as well as all members of the German resistance.

Photo: Polish flag in Berlin 02.05.1945 over the Berlin Victory Column (Siegessäule) when Red Army and Polish Army after fierce fights against Nazis together conquered Berlin that was the seat of criminal Nazi regime in Germany. Visible building of Schloss Bellevue https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Polish_flag_1945_Berlin.jpg (Polish Army, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).