Born: 1874, Mińsk, Russia

Died: February 23, 1960, Warsaw, Poland

Buried: Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw – section 196-5-22

Medals: Polish – Silver Cross of the War Order of Virtuti Militari (1944, no. 8536), Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1938), Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1932), Golden Cross of Merit with Swords, Golden Cross of Merit, Monte Cassino Cross; French – Officer of the Order of the Legion of Honor; Russian St. George Medal; British – Cross of Outstanding Service

Fates before joining Anders Army: Bolesław Szarecki’s father was a Polish railwayman. In 1904 Bolesław graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of the Imperial Kharkiv University. In the same year, he was drafted into the tsarist army and sent to the Russian-Japanese front, performing the duties of a surgeon in an ambulance train. Then he started working at the surgery clinic of Kharkiv University, where he obtained his doctorate and habilitation.

During World War I, he was mobilized again and performed the duties of a surgeon-consultant of the Red Cross.

In 1919 he returned to Poland and was drafted into the Polish Army. He took the position of the head of the Surgical Department at the 1st Regional Hospital, and then at the Main Military Hospital. During the Polish-Bolshevik war of 1920, he co-organized medical support for combat operations.

He was promoted to the rank of senior colonel on January 1, 1928. In this rank, he retired in 1933. In August 1939, at his own request, he was mobilized.

After the outbreak of World War II, during the September campaign in 1939, he was a surgeon at the 104 War Hospital. After the USSR’s aggression against Poland, he was arrested by the Soviets on September 17, 1939 in Trembowla (Tarnopol voivodship). Initially held in Kozielsk, in 1940 he was first transported to a prisoner-of-war camp in Juchnów, and from June 18, 1940 till the so-called “amnesty” in 1941 – in the NKVD POW camp in Griazowiec.

Military history at Anders Army: In 1941 he joined the Polish Army organized in the USSR by General Anders and was appointed brigadier general and head of the Army Health Service. Together with the Army, he was transported to the Middle East, where, after creation of the Polish 2nd Corps, he became its Chief Surgeon and Hospital Inspector. He fought in Italian campaign of the 2nd Corps, incl. as a surgeon (he was then 70 years old) for two days he operated and directed the work of the Main Medical Point during the bloodiest fights of the Battle of Monte Cassino.

Post-War: Bolesław Szarecki returned to Poland in November 1945 as the first general of the Polish Armed Forces in the West. In the years 1945-1949 he was the deputy and then the head of the Health Service Department of the Ministry of National Defense. In the years 1949-1957 he was the Chief Surgeon of the Polish Army. General professor Bolesław Szarecki was the organizer of the military health service in the post-war Polish Army, the author of several textbooks on war surgery and a number of works in this field. He died in Warsaw in 1960 and was buried in the family grave in Stare Powązki cemetery in Warsaw.

In recognition of his services, in 1975 he became a patron of the Military Medical Academy in Łódź.

author: Aneta Hoffmann, Warsaw, Poland