(1908-1940)
Polish officer murdered by the Soviets. Flight Second Lieutenant Lewandowska was the only woman officer to be incarcerated in the Soviet POW Camp for Polish Officers in Kozel’sk. About 27,600 Polish officers were captured following the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland on September 17, 1939. Of these, 26,000 were executed. The POWs were placed in three camps: Kozel’sk, to the southeast of Smolensk; Staro-bel’sk, now within the city limits of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv (formerly known as Kharkov); and Ostashkov, located to the northwest of Moscow. Prisoners sent to Kozel’sk were executed at Katyn Forest in the massacre of Polish prisoners of war by the Russians.
Lewandowska was born on April 22, 1908, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, the elder daughter of Colonel-General Jozef Dowbor-Musnicki, commander of the 1st Polish Corps in 1917—1918 and the Great Poland Army in the province of Poznan in 1919. Lewandowska mastered gliders while still in high school. She made parachute jumps and trained at Poznan Flying Club.
In 1937 Lewandowska was sent to Lwow (now the Ukrainian city of Lviv) to study military radiotelegraphy. In August 1939 she was drafted for service in the 3rd Military Aviation Regiment stationed at No. 3 Air Base near Poznan. On September 1, 1939, after Germany attacked Poland, the base personnel were dispatched eastward by train. The military transport was commanded by Captain Jozef Sidor. After disembarking near Tarnopol on September 22, the Poles were surrounded by Soviet tanks and taken prisoner.
An eyewitness said Captain Sidor and Lewandowska were ordered to leave the group and were placed in a confiscated Polish ambulance, which brought them to Kozel’sk. Al-thought some evidence of Lewandowska’s incarceration in the camp came from survivors, rumors persisted that she used an assumed name because her father was hated by the Soviets. Her name appeared on the so-called Katyn List compiled in 1949 by Adam Muszynski. Lewandowska’s name, however, was missing from the German Katyn List of exhumed bodies that had been identified.
According to the testimony of survivor Wa-claw Mucho, Lewandowska did not board a vehicle transporting her friends to an unknown destination. Several days later she was taken away in another vehicle. It is now known that the destination of both vehicles was the railway siding at Gnezdovo near Smolensk and Katyn Forest, where Lewandowska was executed.
