Henryk Iwański

Henryk Iwański (1902-1978), nom de guerre Bystry, was a member of the Polish resistance during World War II. He is known for leading one of the most daring actions of the Armia Krajowa (Home Army) in support of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. For his assistance to the Polish Jews Iwański was bestowed the title of the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem in 1964.

Before the Second World War Henryk had reached the rank of captain in the Polish Army. Soon after Nazi Germany invaded Poland and began the Holocaust, Henryk was instrumental in the founding of the Żydowski Związek Wojskowy (Jewish Military Union). Together with the rest of his family he dedicated himself to support the Jews, working through the Polish resistance (Armia Krajowa). Iwański was one of the AK members dealing with the Jews, providing them with arms, ammunition, and instructional materials smuggled through the sewers or in carts that brought lime and cement into the ghetto.

From the very first days of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising the AK maintained contact with the Jewish fighters and tried to support them by providing supplies and launching supportive strikes against the Germans. Some of AK soldiers volunteered to join the fighters in the ghetto from the very first day of the uprising. When one of the commanders of the Jewish units, Dawid Moryc Apfelbaum, sent a message to the AK informing the Poles that he had been wounded, and asking for arms and ammunition, Iwański took an AK unit (belonging to the Państwowy Korpus Bezpieczeństwa, the Security Corps) through a tunnel into the Ghetto to directly support the Jewish fighters. Among the 18 members of the unit were his brother, Wacław and Henryk's son, Roman. They entered the ghetto on April 27, 1943, bringing ammunition and other supplies and on the spot they decided to relieve some of the exhausted fighters, engaging the Germans together with the remaining members of the ŻZW on the Muranowski Square. In the fight Wacław was killed; Henryk and his son Roman were seriously wounded, Roman fatally. Moshe Arens, who has written extensively on the revolt, described the fighting:

...
Wikipedia