Born: February 12th, 1917, Kuty (Stanisławów voivodship, Poland)
Died: January, 1999, Edinburgh (UK)
Buried : Edinburgh
Family: father: Kajetan Nikosiewicz, mother: Rozalia Maria (nee Zobolewicz)
Military Medals: Polish – Cross of Valor for the action near Grodzisk Mazowiecki; The Combat Deed Cross, the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit, the Army Medal, the Medal for the Defense War of 1939 and the Combatant Cross of Merit; English – Star 1939-1945, Defense Medal and War Medal.
Fates before joining Anders Army: He graduated from elementary school in Kołomyja, middle school in Stanisławów, and then in Lviv. May 23, 1938 at the Gymnasium M. Copernicus passed his high school diploma and then the entrance examination to the School of Political Sciences and the Higher School of Foreign Trade in Lviv. He started his studies, but due to the impending war he abandoned them and, at his own request, was admitted to the Artillery Cadet School in Włodzimierz Wołyński, then he served in the 30th Heavy Artillery Division in Brest-on-the-Bug.
He took part in the September campaign of 1939 (Pszczyna, Łódź, Skierniewice, Grodzisk Mazowiecki, Pruszków, defense of Warsaw). For participation in the defense of Warsaw, he was awarded the Cross of Valor, he also received an officer’s patent for the rank of lieutenant. After an unsuccessful attempt to get to France, he was captured by the Germans, ending up in a POW camp near Królewiec, from where he escaped. In Lviv, he joined the Underground Army and, as one of the five “White Couriers”, he led volunteers to the Polish Army across the Hungarian border. Arrested by the NKVD on the Hungarian border in the winter of 1939, after escaping from the convoy, he was soon arrested again and tortured in a prison in Stanisławów. Tried, sentenced first to death, and then to 10 years of Far Eastern Labor Camps (Siberia).
Military history: In 1941, after the “amnesty” for Poles, announced on the basis of the Sikorski-Majski Pact, he managed to find his parents in Kazakhstan. He volunteered for the Polish Army in the USSR and was assigned to the 8th Heavy Artillery Regiment. Due to his health impaired by his stay in the labor camp, the military authorities suggested that he be dismissed from the army, but at his own request he remained there, assigned to the 2nd Field Court, where he served as a clerk. Through Palestine, Egypt, South Africa, the USA and Canada, he found his way to Liverpool and eventually Scotland, where he married in December 1944.
Post-War: Demobilized in 1947, he settled with his wife (a soldier of the Women’s Auxiliary Military Service during the war) in Edinburgh. He was very active socially – he was, among others co-founder of the Council of Associations in Edinburgh and its first treasurer, president of the Parent’s Club, secretary of the Polish Cultural and Educational Society, treasurer of the Polish Macierz Szkolna and organizer of summer camps and children’s reunions, as well as other events. He was also the secretary of the Nicolaus Copernicus Polish Scientific Society and a long-time member of the Association of Polish Combatants (Stowarzyszenie Polskich Kombatantów – SPK) in Edinburgh. From 1990 he was the president of this association. Looked after, among others, General Stanisław Maczek. He died on January 11, 1999 in Edinburgh.
Author: Krzysztof Hoffmann, Warsaw, Poland
