Drużyna ratownicza i Stały Punkt Sanitarno-Odżywczy PCK Wadowice
The Rescue Team and the Permanent Sanitary and Nutrition Point of the Polish Red Cross in Wadowice

A contribution to the social history of defensive preparations of the Second Polish Republic

Summary/Abstract: Military preparations for war and the hostilities are usually described as an organization and struggles of individual military formations. Despite the fact that the war conflicts in the twentieth century were becoming more and more total, in which the whole or almost whole potential of the struggling societies was involved. The attention is rarely paid to the non-military factors and participation in the struggles of individual people or social organizations. The Polish Red Cross as an element of the international red cross structures by nature it is called to look after the combatants and victims of wars. Therefore activity description of its individual structures should occupy the prominent place in the wars historiography. The more that in the 1930s lots of work went into preparation of the structures and members this organization to operate in the coming war. Unfortunately due to the lack of a significant part of the source materials or perhaps also due to the lower interest of researches activities of the departments, centers and structures of the Polish Red Cross during World War II have not been sufficiently documented and described. This is what happened among others with the branches organized by the district board of the Polish Red Cross in Wadowice which prepared a rescue team or sanitary and nutritional point for hostilities. It is possible that even both of these structures were organized in double, duplicated form but there is no source to confirm this hypothesis. Both the male and female rescue team as well as the sanitary and nutritional point took part in the hostilities in September 1939. Records of the rescue team commitment were included in the chronicles of the Polish Red Cross activities in the districts of Brzesko and Tarnów as providing aid to victims of bombed transports of civilian refugees. While the sanitary and nutritional point operated at the railway station in Wadowice since the announcement of universal mobilization in the last two days of peace and in the first tree days of war. We have still known too little about the organizational effort and military involvment of activists and members of Polish Red Cross of Wadowice. This topic requires further researches with the hope of finding more reports or documents. A published article by Michał Siwiec-Cielebon in which collected information available from currently known sources and reports, it is a tribute to both those known by name and the still unnamed people who sacrificed their work for society that suffers the victims of health and life in the war struggles with the invaders of 1939.

• Details
• Contents