In commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the death of Home Army officer Jan Piwnik (“Ponury”).
Jan Piwnik was a member of the “Sight Unseen” (“Cichociemni” in Polish). The “Sight Unseen” were special-operations Polish paratroopers organized in Great Britain; more than 300 were dropped from 1941-1944 into occupied Poland — including the part of Belarus incorporated into the interwar Polish Republic — to fight the Germans; one-third of the Sight Unseen died in the struggle. In 1944 Piwnik commanded VII battalion of the Home Army’s 77th Regiment. He died in a June 16, 1944 attack on a German position in the Belarusian hamlet of Bahdany near the village of Jaulashy (Яўлашы in Belarusian, Jewłasze in Polish) in Shchuchyn District in western Belarus. Piwnik was buried in the cemetery at Vavjerka in Lida District. In 1987 his remains were exhumed and taken to the Cistercian Monastery in Wąchock in Poland, where he was re-interred with honors in 1988. A large monument to Jan Piwnik stands in the cemetery in Vavjerka.
З нагоды сямідзесятыя гадавіны смерці афіцэра Арміі Краёвай Яна Піўніка (“Панурага“), які загінуў 16-а чэрвеня 1944 г. у баі з немцамі ля вёсачкі Багданы пад Яўлашымі (Шчучынскі раён).
Monument to Jan Piwnik, Vavjerka 2014. Помнік Яну Піўніку, Ваверка 2014 год.
First grave of Jan Piwnik; photo taken in 1972. Былая могілка Яна Піўніка; здымак з 1972 г. (Photo from/здымак ад http://www.werttrew.fora.pl/nasze-odkrycia-w-calej-polsce,15/tu-zginal-partyzant-por-ponury,1842.html)
