Major Anthony Krusilevsky, Siberian, soldier of the 2nd Polish Corps of General Wadislav Anders, participant in the battles in Monte Cassino and Polish social activist, died in New York. He was the Commander of Area 2 and a board member of the Polish Army Veterans Association of America (SWAP). He was 97 years old.
As SWAP Commander-in-Chief, Tadeusz Antoniak, told PAP on Saturday, Anthony Khrusilievsky has always been working for an independent Poland. He collaborated with various organizations, including Scouts, Gazeta Polska Clubs and the Smolensk-Katyn Committee.
“For us, the first generation who served on the main council (SWAP), Anthony was an indisputable moral authority as an independent member and a citizen of the state. His whole life attests to this, regardless of whether he was in pre-war Poland, in Siberia, in the Second Corps under The leadership of General Anders, or about immigration in England and the USA. He was always guided by the motto + God, honor, homeland + “- emphasized Antoniak.
Chrościelewski died on April 1. From 1950 he lived in the United States. For several decades he was an active and veteran social activist. Polish society knew him, among others, as the head of the Polish National House “Warsaw” in Green Point, where he organized, among other things, many national, social and cultural events. He was one of the founders of the Archangel Choir.
As the 2nd District Commander of the Polish Army Veterans Association (SWAP), he focused on supporting participants in the struggle for independence and former Polish soldiers in their struggle with disability, disease and difficult financial situation.
He was born in 1924. At the age of fifteen, he was transported with his mother and siblings from his hometown of Augustów to Siberia. He spent two years in northern Kazakhstan.
In 1942 he joined the ranks of the Polish Armed Forces in the USSR. He joined Anders’ army, his unit was associated with the Independent Carpathian Battalion, which earlier fought on the front near Tobruk. He traveled with General Anders through Russia, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Italy.
“The soldiers underwent intense training and were armed and at the end of 1942 they were transferred to the Suez Canal and there they fought the Germans who were stationed in the vicinity of Alexandria and conducted air raids over the Suez Canal. After another to Egypt and Italy “- mentions the World War II Museum.
In Italy, Chrościelewski fought, among other things, in the Battle of Monte Cassino as well as in Loreto, Ancona and Bologna. After the war, he came to England with the 3rd Carpathian Rifle Division.
Major Chrościelewski was honored for services, among other things, the Commander’s Cross with the Order of the Star of Poland Restituta, the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, the Combat Cross of the Polish Armed Forces in the West, and the Monte Cassino Memorial Cross.
He will be resting on April 17, alongside his wife, Reia, who is also a Siberian woman, at the Veteran Cemetery at American Czestochova in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
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