Beret : Lieutenant M Lewinski, Polish Infantry

Black wool beret with black leather band adjusted with black cotton tape. There are two black metal ventilation holes, lined with black leather on the right side of the beret. The centre front has an oval dark blue wool badge with a white embroidered cotton Polish eagle. Beneath is a silver rank star for lieutenant. The inside of the beret is lined with black cotton and is stamped in white with size and manufacturer's details '7 KANGOL WEAR LTD (broad arrow) 1944'.

Associated with the service of Lieutenant Maximilian Lewinski, Polish Infantry, born 27 December 1914 at Bedzin in south east Poland, who was a regular Polish Army Officer in the pre-war years. He was taken POW by the Germans during their 1939 invasion of Poland but managed to escape and joined the Polish Underground. This period of his life remains unknown as he never discussed it with his family, but it is known that Lewinski’s home town of Bedzin was being steadily cleared of its 27,000 Jews from May 1942 before a final liquidation of its Ghetto on the night of 1 August 1943. Most Jews passed through nearby labour camps before being sent to Auschwitz. This is probably the fate of Lewinski’s parents, brother and sisters, who Lewinski failed to locate after the war. He operated under the false name of Mieczylaw Gurlaga in the Polish Secret Army (AK) Detachments ‘Zmudzin’ and ‘Bartkiewicz’. He participated in the Warsaw Uprising but, according to Red Cross records, was captured by the Germans on 5 October 1944 and placed in Stalag XI B at Fallingboostel, near Hannover, where most of those captured during the Uprising were sent. Assigned POW number 140622, he was later interned in Stalag VI J at Fichtenhain, near Dusseldorf. At the end of the war, Lewinski was retained by his British liberators as an interpreter and liaison officer and moved to Hameln (Hamelyn) prison where German officials accused of war crimes were being held awaiting trial. According to his family, Lewinski witnessed a number of hangings (64 German men and women were executed at this location), including that of female Belsen guard Irma Grese. His participation was recorded on film. It was in Hameln that Lewinski met his wife-to-be, Janina who had been transported from her native France by the Germans to work in a labour camp during the war. They were married in Hameln in 1947. Upon discharge from the British army in 1949, he emigrated to Australia with Janina aboard the Lauro Lines passenger ship ‘Surriento’, arriving in Melbourne on 1 December 1949, and settled in Sydney.