born: May 17, 1912 in Tarnopol, Poland
died: November 13, 1999 in New York, USA
wife: Ewa nee Sternalska
medals: Polish – Monte Cassino Commemorative Cross (no. 36020), Cross of Valour, Silver Cross of Merit with Swords, Army Medal; British – 1939-1945 Star, Italy Star, Defence Medal, War Medal 1939-1945
Fates before joining Anders Army :
A graduate of the Junior and High Schools in Tarnopol, and then the Faculty of Law of the Jan Kazimierz University in Lviv and the Academy of Foreign Trade in this city. A member of academic organizations and then the Polish Lawyers Association. He was also the secretary of the Polish-Hungarian Union of Lawyers, which enabled him to hold a multiple-entry visa to the Polish-Hungarian border. Even before the war, he worked as a referendary in a legal office.
The outbreak of World War II found Zbigniew Konikowski in Lviv. He was appointed to work in the offices of transport and communication services of the railway junction in Lviv. After the city was taken over by the Soviets on September 22, 1939, together with his fellow officers, he planned to get to the Hungarian side due to the risk of being arrested by the Soviets. He and his friends were arrested by the NKVD on October 4, 1939 in the border village of Porohy near Nadwórna (Stanisławów voivodship) – in the State Forests forester’s lodge, where they were waiting to cross the “green border”. Imprisoned in a temporary detention center in Nadwórna, and then until November 6 in an overcrowded prison in Stanisławów. Then he was transported to the Brygidki prison in Lviv, where three investigations were conducted against him, and where he stayed until December 24, 1939. On that day, together with a large transport of prisoners, he was loaded without a court sentence and transported in cattle cars to the prison in Mikołajewo, where mostly representatives of the Polish intelligentsia were imprisoned with him. Here, Zbigniew Konikowski was subjected to further investigations, accused of trying to cross the border “to the Sikorski gang”, espionage and defending the capitalist system against the workers.
At the end of May 1940, he was again transported by cattle wagons – after a few days he was in the Starobielsk II camp. Here the sentence of the Soviet authorities to death for espionage was read to him. He stayed in this camp until the outbreak of the German-Soviet war in June 1941, when he was taken along with other prisoners to another transport. After 2 weeks, they reached Krasnoyarsk by train. Then, at the turn of July and August 1941, about 2,500 prisoners from the camp in Starobielsk II arrived by barge along the Yenisei River to the port of Dudinka at the mouth of the river to the Kara Sea in the Far North. The destination was the camp in Norilsk. Here, Zbigniew Konikowski learned about the change of sentence to 25 years in a labor camp, and later about the conclusion of the Sikorski-Mayski Pact. Demanding better treatment, Polish prisoners refused to go to daily, murderous work. At the end of September, Zbigniew Konikowski was qualified for the first transport of released Polish prisoners (150 people). They took an icebreaker up the Yenisei to Krasnoyarsk. Then by train to Omsk. He traveled further by trains, then by ship on Amudaria. There he fell seriously ill with typhus and was treated in a hospital near Bukhara.
Military history:
At the beginning of 1942, he joined the Polish Armed Forces in the USSR as a volunteer in Bukhara. Assigned to the Infantry Cadet School in Kermine, where he studied from 19.03 to 15.08.1942 – the moment of evacuation of the School to Iran. Then, until December 1942, he finished this school in Iraq. Promoted after graduation to the rank of corporal cadet. Initially, he served in the infantry, then in the artillery of the Polish 2nd Corps (registration no. 1912/293/III) – 7th Light Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment. Participant in the Italian campaign of the 2 Corps, including the Battle of Monte Cassino.
Post-War:
After the war, he remained in exile in Great Britain. From 1951 in the USA. Very active in many Polish community and veterans organizations in the United States. In the years 1965-1985, adjutant general of the Polish Army Veterans’ Association in America (SWAP) and executive director of the SWAP Foundation. Being the chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee at the Polish American Congress, he contributed to the adoption in 1976 by the US Congress of an act granting Polish war veterans the right to medical and hospital care. He died in New York in 1999.
