The Fabelmans is a 2022 American coming-of-age drama movie directed by Steven Spielberg, who co-wrote and co-produced it with Tony Kushner. The movie is a bit of an autobiographical story based on Spielberg's early years and first years as a filmmaker.

It stars Gabriel LaBelle as Sammy, alongside Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, and Judd Hirsch. The movie is dedicated to the memories of Spielberg's real-life parents Leah Adler and Arnold Spielberg.

The movie received seven nominations at the 95th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director for Spielberg, Best Actress for Williams, Best Supporting Actor for Hirsch.

It also earned five nominations at the 80th Golden Globe Awards in 2023, winning Best Motion Picture – Drama and Best Director for Spielberg.

Awards and nominations

References

2022 drama movies
American drama movies
Golden Globe Award winning movies
Movies directed by Steven Spielberg
Movies composed by John Williams
Movies set in Arizona
Movies set in Los Angeles
Movies set in New Jersey
Movies set in the 1950s
Movies set in the 1960s
Movies about friendship
Movies about siblings
Movies about tornadoes
Movies about dysfunctional families
Universal Pictures movies

The Fabelmans


Corazón valiente (Fearless Heart) esa Spanish-laenghwij telenovela prodyuus'd bii t' Yunitid Staits-beis'd televisiien network Telemundo, featuring a' ensembl cast. Adriana Fonseca, Ximena Duque, José Luis Reséndez an Fabián Ríos starred as dem mien protaagonists. Aylín Mújica an Manuel Landeta starred as dem mien antaagonists.

Telemundo aired Corazón valiente wiiknights at 9pm/8c from March 6, 2012 to Januarii 7, 2013 riplaciin Flor salvaje. On Januarii 8, 2013 La patrona ripleis'd Corazón valiente. As wit most o' dem otha novelas, Telemundo broadcast closed kapsyuuns i' Inglish, as well as Spanish.

Plot
This esa t' storii o' t' friendship bitwiin tuu girls i' a' riimot citii calla Villa de Bravo. Ángela Valdez (Sofía Sanabria), humble an swiit, waa t' daughter o' Miguel Valdez (Jorge Luis Pila) t' bodiiguard o' t' powerful an wealthii Sandoval Navarro familii. Samantha Sandoval Navarro was t' rich girl guarded bii Miguel Valdéz. Dem tuu girls' lives ar foreva chaynged when Samantha i' kidnapped, resulting i' Miguel Valdéz sacrificing his life t' save her. Efta what happened, dem girls were separated.

Ángela and Samantha miit again afta eightiin years. Ángela (Adriana Fonseca) i' mariid t' Luis Martínez (Gabriel Valenzuela) haa a' daughter Violeta (Nicole Arci) an works as a' baker. For her part, Samantha (Ximena Duque), works as a bodiiguard. Samantha thiinks o' t' idea o' inviting Ángela to work wi' her; Ángela aksepts an assigns her t' misyun t' protect Génesis Arroyo,  t' daughter o' a' multimillionaire lawyer neim'd Juan Marcos Arroyo (José Luis Reséndez) who is unfortunatlii mariid to Isabel Uriarte (Sonia Smith) a' proud an evil woman who i' unfaithful ivin wi' his ouun bodiiguard.  Meanwhile, Samantha i' ordered t' protect Willy del Castillo (Fabián Ríos) her first love, who has become a whimsical playboy an womanizer. Samantha decides not t' reveal anything o' her past, but hi ends up discovering who she is an love arises between them.

Thus, Ángela and Samantha will hauf t' fight wi' all dem obstacles daa their enemies will put them through i' order t' b' hapii wi' t' piopel dey love, while always having a' brave heart.

Cast
Adriana Fonseca as Ángela Valdez

José Luis Reséndez as Juan Marcos Arroyo

Aylín Mújica as Fernanda del Castillo

Ximena Duque as Samantha Sandoval Navarro

Fabián Ríos as Willy del Castillo

Gabriel Valenzuela as Luis Martínez

Corazón valiente


The Tav HaYosher is a certification mark offered, free of charge, to Kosher food establishments that meet a series of ethical criteria developed by the organization, Uri L'Tzedek. Particularly, the Tav HaYosher confirms that an eating establishment with its seal pays minimum wage to all employees and overtime to those employees working more than 40 hours a week. It also ensures the establishment offers employees appropriate breaks as required by law, and provides a safe and abuse-free working environment.

Traditional kosher certification agencies such as the Orthodox Union and Star-K offer kosher certification (known in Hebrew as a Hechsher), which confirms that the food meets the standards of kosher dietary law and can be eaten by those Jews who observe the laws of Kashrut. Many non-Jews purchase kosher food, believing that the kosher certification implies that the food was produced to meet a higher ethical standard all around, not just in terms of Jewish law (Halacha) and Kashrut. Many kosher consumers were shocked to discover that Agriprocessors, a kosher slaughterhouse and meat processor in Postville, Iowa, had been raided by Federal authorities on May 12, 2009, where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had discovered breaches ranging from fraud to defiance of child labor laws to immigration violations.

In 2009, the Tav HaYosher was announced by Uri L'Tzedek as the Orthodox Jewish community's response to these legal and ethical offenses. Each restaurant applying for the certificate is reviewed by one of 60 volunteers, who audit the company's ledgers and speak with workers to ensure that they are being treated fairly. The Tav HaYosher ensures that workers receive their rights according to federal and state law as well as ethical standards. After the free initial certification, inspectors visit each establishment unannounced every two to three months to verify continuing compliance.

In May 2009 five New York City restaurants carried Tav HaYosher seal and by January 2010, Tav HaYosher certification had been granted to over 70 dining establishments in Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, California, Ohio, Missouri, Texas, and Montreal. However, certification was sometimes met with controversy, as occurred on June 15, 2009, at Mike's Italian Kitchen and Mike's Bistro. Businesses such as Noah's Ark, with locations in Manhattan and Teaneck, New Jersey, were covered by the Tav HaYosher, with owner Noam Sokolow remarking that he wanted his "restaurants to be on a level where everyone feels comfortable" and that Tav HaYosher offered a means "to have an additional agency supervising an aspect we feel is important." Sokolow stated that he had to make no changes in his business practices to meet the certification standards in any of his restaurants.

References

External links
Tav HaYosher Website
Tav HaYosher Blog
Chanel 12 New York News Clip About Tav HaYosher
Noah's Ark Deli WebSite

Religious consumer symbols
Kosher food

Tav HaYosher


Kabaddi is a team sport from South Asia.
Two teams are on opposite halves of a small field.  They take turns sending a "raider" into the other half. This is to win points by tackling members of the opposing team. Then the raider tries to return to their own half. They hold their breath and chant the word "Kabaddi" during the whole raid. The raider must not cross the lobby unless they touch any of their opponents. If they do not touch anyone then they will be "out". There is also a bonus line.  If the raider touches it and returns to their side of the field, they will get extra points. If the raider is not able to get back to their own side, then they are considered "out".  RV -4416

In the international team version of kabaddi, there are two teams of seven members and 4 are in substitution. Each is on opposite halves of a field of 10 m × 13 m in case of men and 8 m × 12 m in case of women. Each has three extra players held in reserve. The game is played with 20-minute halves.  There is a five-minute half-time break when the teams change sides.

Teams take turns sending a "raider" to the opposite team's half.  The goal is to tag or wrestle ("confine") members of the opposite team. Tagged members are "out" and temporarily sent off the field.

The goal of the defenders is to stop the raider from returning to the home side before taking a breath. If any of the seven players cross the lobby without touching the raider they will be declared "out".

The raider is sent off the field if:
 the raider takes a breath before returning or
 the raider crosses the boundary line or
 a part of the raider's body touches the ground outside the boundary (except during a struggle with an opposing team member).

Each time when a player is "out", the opposing team earns a point. A team scores a bonus of two points called a "lona". If the entire opposing team is declared "out". At the end of the game, the team with the most points wins.

Matches are based on age and weight. Six officials supervise a match: one referee, two umpires, a scorer and two assistant scorers.

the modernised version of Game was founded in Maharashtra. Kabaddi received International exposure in the 1937 Olympics, Demonstrated by India. The game was introduced in Indian Games in Calcutta 1938. Kabaddi is popularized by Sundar Ram of India in Japan, When he toured on behalf Asian Amateur Kabaddi Federation.

Kabaddi World Cup
Men's World Cup 2004
The Kabaddi World Cup was first played in 2004.  It was played again in 2007,  2010 and 2016. So far India is the unbeaten champion in Kabaddi World Cup. Iran is the next most successful nation being twice runner-up. South Korea was the runner-up in 2010.

Women's World Cup
The Women's Kabaddi World Cup was first played in 2012 in Patna, Bihar, India. India won the championship defeating Iran in the finals gold.

Other websites

Team sports
Sport in Bangladesh
Sport in Iran
Sport in Pakistan
Sport in India

Kabaddi


Come Out Fighting is a 1945 American film directed by William Beaudine. It was the last in the Monogram Pictures series of "East Side Kids" films before the series was reinvented as "The Bowery Boys.  Film critic Leonard Maltin described the film as "grating," giving it one and a half out of four stars.

Plot
The East Side Kids are ejected from their clubhouse in a raid brought on by complaining neighbors, they have no place to train for an upcoming boxing tournament. The police commissioner is worried that his son Gilbert, who prefers ballet to boxing, is turning out to be a wimp, so he offers the gang a deal: he'll lay off them if they will take his son in their gang and toughen the boy up. Gang member Muggs McGinnis takes an instant dislike to Gilbert, and sets Gilbert up to get in a fight with Danny More, the gang's best boxer, but is impressed when he sees Gilbert use ballet moves to avoid getting hit, and instead knock out Danny. Later, the East Side Kids learn that Gilbert's girlfriend Rita has taken Gilbert to an illegal casino owned by local gangsters. The East Side Kids get to the casino just before cops raid the place. Muggs is able to sneak Gilbert out, but Danny is injured, and Muggs himself is caught, and is therefore barred from entering the boxing tournament. Gilbert agrees to participate in the tournament, and is in bad shape after the first two rounds. Muggs advises Gilbert to use his ballet moves, which enables Gilbert to win the match. Gilbert then confesses the truth about having been at the casino, and his police commissioner father clears Muggs of all charges.

Cast

The East Side Kids
 Leo Gorcey as Mugs McGinnis
 Huntz Hall as Glimpy
 Billy Benedict as Skinny
 Gabriel Dell as Talman (a.k.a. Pete)
 Mende Koenig as Danny
 Buddy Gorman as Sammy

Remaining cast
 June Carlson as Jane Riley
 Amelita Ward as Rita Joyce
 Addison Richards as Police Commissioner James Mitchell
 George Meeker as Silk Henry
 Johnny Duncan as Gilbert Mitchell
 Fred Kelsey as Mr. McGinnis, Sr.
 Douglas Wood as Mayor
 Milton Kibbee as Police chief
 Pat Gleason as Little Pete Vargas
 Robert Homans as Police Sergeant Tom Riley
 Patsy Moran as Mrs. McGinnis
 Alan Foster as Whitey
 Davison Clark as Officer McGowan
 Meyer Grace as Jake
 Betty Sinclair as Stenographer

References

External links

1945 films
1945 comedy films
1940s English-language films
American black-and-white films
Monogram Pictures films
Films directed by William Beaudine
American comedy films
Films produced by Sam Katzman
American boxing films
East Side Kids
1940s American films

Come Out Fighting (1945 film)


The Wheaton College Billy Graham Center was founded and opened in 1981 on the campus of Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. Named after Billy Graham, the center is the primary location for many of Wheaton College's bible and theology classes, as well as the graduate school's main headquarters, and host to multiple museums and auditoriums.

The Wheaton College Billy Graham Center Museum, opened in 1980, is designed to help visitors "extend their understanding of the good news about Jesus", and contains exhibits about the history of Christian evangelism in the United States and the ministry of Billy Graham. Changing exhibits are designed around the themes of evangelism, missions and Christian art.

The center differs from the Billy Graham Library, opened in 2007 in Charlotte, North Carolina; the library serves primarily as an evangelical tool for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and is open to the general public.

According to journalist Jeff Sharlet, The Billy Graham Center holds 600 boxes of records for the Christian political organization The Fellowship.

References

External links

Religious museums in Illinois
Museums in DuPage County, Illinois
Buildings and structures in Wheaton, Illinois
Graham, Billy
Billy Graham

Billy Graham Center


Oyne is a small village in rural Aberdeenshire at the bottom of Bennachie in Scotland.

Locality
The village has limited local resources. It once had a railway station which closed 6 May 1968, and now has a daily bus service to Inverurie  away and to Huntly. The area is popular with commuters to Inverurie/Huntly/Aberdeen. The area has a number of large private houses such as Westhall House, which was a small hotel until the 1990s. The Horn family were lairds of Westhall.

Oyne is set on a landscape of mountains right at its doorstep.

Oyne also has a café and shop called "Touched by Scotland". Selling souvenirs and snacks, all the goods made in the shop and café are either locally grown or home made.

Oyne School is in the centre of the village of Oyne, is non-denominational and the catchment area is the village of Oyne and the surrounding rural area.  The school's current pupil roll numbers in the 50s. The main school building dates back to 1874 but has been substantially modernised and extended to provide the current 3 teacher accommodation.  The school has an extensive playing field to the rear of the building.

Harthill Castle

Of note is the ancient seat of the family of Leith of Harthill, Harthill Castle (sometimes called 'Torries'), which stands close to the parish church. It dates from at least the 15th century and was extensively restored in 1638 by John Leith, the "violent laird". The castle was set on fire in the late 17th century, possible by John's son, Patrick Leith, to prevent it from falling into the hands of Leith creditors. It stood as a ruin for the next 300 years.

Ann Tweedy Savage purchased the castle in 1975 and with Slessor Troup, one of the area's top master masons, restored it between 1975 and 1977. The restoration work won the Saltire Award in 1977.

Harthill Castle is a pink-washed Z-plan twin-tower building, seven storeys () high, made of solid granite, and set in woodland and farmland in Oyne at the foot of Bennachie. The ground floor is vaulted and has arrow slits and musket holes for windows. The next two storeys are partially vaulted. There are circular staircases in each tower, each rising counter-clockwise. The Great Hall has a  fireplace that predates the building and was probably brought to the property by the Leiths from their previous home.

References

 Bickley, Francis, The Leiths of Harthill, London, 1937.

Villages in Aberdeenshire

Oyne


The Kingmaker is a Big Finish Productions audio drama based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The drama was written by Nev Fountain, who is best known for his work on the BBC radio and television comedy series Dead Ringers, and guest stars Jon Culshaw, who in that series is known for his impression of Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor.

The Doctor travels to the year 1485, to investigate the mystery of the Princes in the Tower, in order to fulfil a contract to write a series of children's books. Is there another time traveller on the loose? And just why is there a robot in the TARDIS?

Plot
This is a historical serial in four episodes, concerning the murder by Richard III of England of the Princes in the Tower, set mainly in the year 1485. The Doctor is investigating the death of the Princes because it is a genuine historical mystery. He visits William Shakespeare, in the 16th century, to learn as much background as he can from the author of the most famous play based on the life of Richard III, before taking the more dangerous step of a landing in 1485.

Performance and Context
Starring Peter Davison, The Kingmaker is written by professional scriptwriter Nev Fountain, best known as writer of the radio comedy series Dead Ringers for BBC Radio 4. Moreover one of the principal guest stars in this story is the Dead Ringers actor and impressionist Jon Culshaw.

The script has some elements which spoof The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (there is a robot which evokes memories of Marvin, the Paranoid Android); it has William Shakespeare (complete with a humorous, but authentic, cod-Birmingham accent); and it has King Richard III (both the character in Shakespeare's play, and the actual king in 1485). It also has Jon Culshaw doing, at one point, his famous impression of Tom Baker as the 4th Doctor. Culshaw also gives a performance as King Richard's brother in law, Earl Rivers.

Cast
The Doctor — Peter Davison
Peri — Nicola Bryant
Erimem — Caroline Morris
Richard, Duke of Gloucester/Richard III — Stephen Beckett
Earl Rivers/Voice of the Fourth Doctor — Jon Culshaw
Mr Seyton — Michael Fenton Stevens
Henry, Duke of Buckingham — Marcus Hutton
Judith — Linzi Matthews
Sir James Tyrell — Chris Neill
Clarrie — Arthur Smith
Susan — Katie Wimpenny

Notes
Jon Culshaw does his famous Tom Baker impression when the Fifth Doctor listens to the Fourth Doctor's dictated notes for the incomplete (and fictional) work "Doctor Who Discovers Historical Mysteries".
This audio drama features the appearance of a new series Doctor as, in a way, the Ninth Doctor is part of the plot.

Critical reception
Matt Michael, reviewing the audio for Doctor Who Magazine, criticised it strongly, calling it "over-engineered and overlong", and saying that it "can't make its mind up whether it wants to be comedy or tragedy, and ends up doing neither very well."

References

External links
Big Finish Productions – ''The Kingmaker

2006 audio plays
Fourth Doctor audio plays
Fifth Doctor audio plays
Fiction set in the 1480s
Cultural depictions of Richard III of England
Cultural depictions of William Shakespeare

The Kingmaker (audio drama)


The Home Army (, abbreviated AK; ) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) established in the aftermath of the German and Soviet invasions in September 1939. Over the next two years, the Home Army absorbed most of the other Polish partisans and underground forces. Its allegiance was to the Polish government-in-exile in London, and it constituted the armed wing of what came to be known as the Polish Underground State. Estimates of the Home Army's 1944 strength range between 200,000 and 600,000. The latter number made the Home Army not only Poland's largest underground resistance movement but, along with Soviet and Yugoslav partisans, one of Europe's largest World War II underground movements.

The Home Army sabotaged German transports bound for the Eastern Front in the Soviet Union, destroying German supplies and tying down substantial German forces. It also fought pitched battles against the Germans, particularly in 1943 and in Operation Tempest from January 1944. The Home Army's most widely known operation was the Warsaw Uprising of August–October 1944. The Home Army also defended Polish civilians against atrocities by Germany's Ukrainian and Lithuanian collaborators. Its attitude toward Jews remains a controversial topic.

As Polish–Soviet relations deteriorated, conflict grew between the Home Army and Soviet forces. The Home Army's allegiance to the Polish government-in-exile caused the Soviet government to consider the Home Army to be an impediment to the introduction of a communist-friendly government in Poland, which hindered cooperation and in some cases led to outright conflict. On 19 January 1945, after the Red Army had cleared most Polish territory of German forces, the Home Army was disbanded. After the war, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, communist government propaganda portrayed the Home Army as an oppressive and reactionary force. Thousands of ex-Home Army personnel were deported to gulags and Soviet prisons, while other ex-members, including a number of senior commanders, were executed. After the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe, the portrayal of the Home Army was no longer subject to government censorship and propaganda.

Origins

The Home Army originated in the Service for Poland's Victory (Służba Zwycięstwu Polski), which General Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski set up on 27 September 1939, just as the coordinated German and Soviet invasions of Poland neared completion. Seven weeks later, on 17 November 1939, on orders from General Władysław Sikorski, the Service for Poland's Victory was superseded by the Armed Resistance (Związek Walki Zbrojnej), which in turn, a little over two years later, on 14 February 1942, became the Home Army. During that time, many other resistance organisations remained active in Poland, although most of them, merged with the Armed Resistance or with its successor, the Home Army, and substantially augmented its numbers between 1939 and 1944.

The Home Army was loyal to the Polish government-in-exile and to its agency in occupied Poland, the Government Delegation for Poland (Delegatura). The Polish civilian government envisioned the Home Army as an apolitical, nationwide resistance organisation. The supreme command defined the Home Army's chief tasks as partisan warfare against the German occupiers, the re-creation of armed forces underground and, near the end of the German occupation, a general armed rising to be prosecuted until victory. Home Army plans envisioned, at war's end, the restoration of the pre-war government following the return of the government-in-exile to Poland.

The Home Army, though in theory subordinate to the civil authorities and to the government-in-exile, often acted somewhat independently, with neither the Home Army's commanders in Poland nor the "London government" fully aware of the other's situation.

After Germany started its invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, the Soviet Union joined the Allies and signed the Anglo-Soviet Agreement on 12 July 1941. This put the Polish government in a difficult position since it had previously pursued a policy of "two enemies". Although a Polish–Soviet agreement was signed in August 1941, cooperation continued to be difficult and deteriorated further after 1943 when Nazi Germany publicised the Katyn massacre of 1940.

Until the major rising in 1944, the Home Army concentrated on self-defense (the freeing of prisoners and hostages, defense against German pacification operations) and on attacks against German forces. Home Army units carried out thousands of armed raids and intelligence operations, sabotaged hundreds of railway shipments, and participated in many partisan clashes and battles with German police and Wehrmacht units. The Home Army also assassinated prominent Nazi collaborators and Gestapo officials in retaliation against Nazi terror inflicted on Poland's civilian population; prominent individuals assassinated by the Home Army included Igo Sym (1941) and Franz Kutschera (1944).

Membership

Size
In February 1942, when the Home Army was formed from the Armed Resistance, it numbered around 100,000 members. Less than a year later, at the start of 1943, it had reached a strength of around 200,000. In the summer of 1944, when Operation Tempest began, the Home Army reached its highest membership: estimates of membership in the first half and summer of 1944 range from 200,000, through 300,000, 380,000 and 400,000 to 450,000–500,000, though most estimates average at about 400,000; the strength estimates vary due to the constant integration of other resistance organisations into the Home Army, and that while the number of members was high and that of sympathizers was even higher, the number of armed members participating in operations at any given time was smaller—as little as one per cent in 1943, and as many as five to ten per cent in 1944—due to an insufficient number of weapons.

Home Army numbers in 1944 included a cadre of over 10,000–11,000 officers, 7,500 officers-in-training (singular: podchorąży) and 88,000 non-commissioned officers (NCOs). The officer cadre was formed from prewar officers and NCOs, graduates of underground courses, and elite operatives usually parachuted in from the West (the Silent Unseen). The basic organizational unit was the platoon, numbering 35–50 people, with an unmobilized skeleton version of 16–25; in February 1944, the Home Army had 6,287 regular and 2,613 skeleton platoons operational. Such numbers made the Home Army not only the largest Polish resistance movement, but one of the two largest in World War II Europe. Casualties during the war are estimated at 34,000 to 100,000, plus some 20,000–50,000 after the war (casualties and imprisonment).

Demographics
The Home Army was intended to be a mass organisation that was founded by a core of prewar officers. Home Army soldiers fell into three groups. The first two consisted of "full-time members": undercover operatives, living mostly in urban settings under false identities (most senior Home Army officers belonged to this group); and uniformed (to a certain extent) partisans, living in forested regions (leśni, or "forest people"), who openly fought the Germans (the forest people are estimated at some 40 groups, numbering 1,200–4,000 persons in early 1943, but their numbers grew substantially during Operation Tempest). The third, largest group were "part-time members": sympathisers who led "double lives" under their real names in their real homes, received no payment for their services, and stayed in touch with their undercover unit commanders but were seldom mustered for operations, as the Home Army planned to use them only during a planned nationwide rising.

The Home Army was intended to be representative of the Polish nation, and its members were recruited from most parties and social classes. Its growth was largely based on integrating scores of smaller resistance organisations into its ranks; most of the other Polish underground armed organizations were incorporated into the Home Army, though they retained varying degrees of autonomy. The largest organization that merged into the Home Army was the leftist Peasants' Battalions (Bataliony Chłopskie) around 1943–1944, and parts of the National Armed Forces (Narodowe Siły Zbrojne) became subordinate to the Home Army. In turn, individual Home Army units varied substantially in their political outlooks, notably in their attitudes toward ethnic minorities and toward the Soviets. The largest group that completely refused to join the Home Army was the pro-Soviet, communist People's Army (Armia Ludowa), which numbered 30,000 people at its height in 1944.

Women

Home Army ranks included a number of female operatives. Most women worked in the communications branch, where many held leadership roles or served as couriers. Approximately a seventh to a tenth of the Home Army insurgents were female.

Notable women in the Home Army included Elżbieta Zawacka, an underground courier who was sometimes called the only female Cichociemna.  organised an intelligence network in German-occupied Belarus in 1942–1944.  and Emilia Malessa were high-ranking officers described as "holding top posts" within the communication branch of the organisation.  headed the distribution branch. Several all-female units existed within the AK structures, including , an entirely female sabotage unit led by Wanda Gertz, who carried out assassinations of female Gestapo informants in addition to sabotage. During the Warsaw Uprising, two all-female units were created—a demolition unit and a sewer system unit.

Many women participated in the Warsaw Uprising, particularly as medics or scouts; they were estimated to form about 75% of the insurgent medical personnel. By the end of the uprising, there were about 5,000 female casualties among the insurgents, with over 2,000 female soldiers taken captive; the latter number reported in contemporary press caused a "European sensation".

Structure

Home Army Headquarters was divided into five sections, two bureaus and several other specialized units:
 Section I: Organization – personnel, justice, religion
 Section II: Intelligence and Counterintelligence
 Section III: Operations and Training – coordination, planning, preparation for a nationwide uprising
 Section IV: Logistics
 Section V: Communication – including with the Western Allies; air drops
 Bureau of Information and Propaganda (sometimes called "Section VI") – information and propaganda
 Bureau of Finances (sometimes called "Section VII") – finances
 Kedyw (acronym for Kierownictwo Dywersji, Polish for "Directorate of Diversion") – special operations
 Directorate of Underground Resistance

The Home Army's commander was subordinate in the military chain of command to the Polish Commander-in-Chief (General Inspector of the Armed Forces) of the Polish government-in-exile and answered in the civilian chain of command to the Government Delegation for Poland.

The Home Army's first commander, until his arrest by the Germans in 1943, was Stefan Rowecki (nom de guerre "Grot", "Spearhead"). Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski (Tadeusz Komorowski, nom de guerre "Bór", "Forest") commanded from July 1943 until his surrender to the Germans when the Warsaw Uprising was suppressed in October 1944. Leopold Okulicki, nom de guerre Niedzwiadek ("Bear"), led the Home Army in its final days.

Regions
The Home Army was divided geographically into regional branches or areas (obszar), which were subdivided into subregions or subareas (podokręg) or independent areas (okręgi samodzielne). There were 89 inspectorates (inspektorat) and 280 (as of early 1944) districts (obwód) as smaller organisational units. Overall, the Home Army regional structure largely resembled Poland's interwar administration division, with an okręg being similar to a voivodeship (see Administrative division of Second Polish Republic).

There were three to five areas: Warsaw (Obszar Warszawski, with some sources differentiating between left- and right-bank areas – Obszar Warszawski prawo- i lewobrzeżny), Western (Obszar Zachodni, in the Pomerania and Poznań regions), and Southeastern (Obszar Południowo-Wschodni, in the Lwów area); sources vary on whether there was a Northeastern Area (centered in Białystok – Obszar Białystocki) or whether Białystok was classified as an independent area (Okręg samodzielny Białystok).

In 1943 the Home Army began recreating the organization of the prewar Polish Army, its various units now being designated as platoons, battalions, regiments, brigades, divisions, and operational groups.

Operations

Intelligence

The Home Army supplied valuable intelligence to the Allies; 48 per cent of all reports received by the British secret services from continental Europe between 1939 and 1945 came from Polish sources. The total number of those reports is estimated at 80,000, and 85 per cent of them were deemed to be high quality or better. The Polish intelligence network grew rapidly; near the end of the war, it had over 1,600 registered agents.

The Western Allies had limited intelligence assets in Central and Eastern Europe. The extensive in-place Polish intelligence network proved a major resource; between the French capitulation and other Allied networks that were undeveloped at the time, it was even described as "the only [A]llied intelligence assets on the Continent". According to , for the Western Allies, the intelligence provided by the Home Army was considered to be the best source of information on the Eastern Front.

Home Army intelligence provided the Allies with information on German concentration camps and the Holocaust in Poland (including the first reports on this subject received by the Allies), German submarine operations, and, most famously, the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket. In one Project Big Ben mission (Operation Wildhorn III; Polish cryptonym, Most III, "Bridge III"), a stripped-for-lightness RAF twin-engine Dakota flew from Brindisi, Italy, to an abandoned German airfield in Poland to pick up intelligence prepared by Polish aircraft-designer Antoni Kocjan, including  of V-2 rocket wreckage from a Peenemünde launch, a Special Report 1/R, no. 242, photographs, eight key V-2 parts, and drawings of the wreckage. Polish agents also provided reports on the German war production, morale, and troop movements. The Polish intelligence network extended beyond Poland and even beyond Europe: for example, the intelligence network organized by Mieczysław Zygfryd Słowikowski in North Africa has been described as "the only [A]llied ... network in North Africa". The Polish network even had two agents in the German high command itself.

The researchers who produced the first Polish–British in-depth monograph on Home Army intelligence (Intelligence Co-operation Between Poland and Great Britain During World War II: Report of the Anglo-Polish Historical Committee, 2005) described contributions of Polish intelligence to the Allied victory as "disproportionally large" and argued that "the work performed by Home Army intelligence undoubtedly supported the Allied armed effort much more effectively than subversive and guerilla activities".

Subversion and propaganda
The Home Army also conducted psychological warfare. Its Operation N created the illusion of a German movement opposing Adolf Hitler within Germany itself.

The Home Army published a weekly Biuletyn Informacyjny (Information Bulletin), with a top circulation (on 25 November 1943) of 50,000 copies.

Major operations
Sabotage was coordinated by the Union of Retaliation and later by Wachlarz and Kedyw units.

Major Home Army military and sabotage operations included:
 the Zamość Rising of 1942–1943, with the Home Army sabotaging German plans to expel Poles under Generalplan Ost
 the protection of the Polish population from the massacres of Poles in Volhynia in 1943–1944
 Operation Garland, in 1942, sabotaging German rail transport
 Operation Belt in 1943, a series of attacks on German border outposts on the frontier between the General Government and the territories annexed by Germany
 Operation Jula, in 1944, another rail-sabotage operation
 most notably Operation Tempest; in 1944, a series of nationwide risings which aimed primarily to seize control of cities and areas where German forces were preparing  defenses against the Soviet Red Army, so that Polish underground civil authorities could take power before the arrival of Soviet forces.

The largest and best-known of the Operation Tempest battles, the Warsaw Uprising, constituted an attempt to liberate Poland's capital and began on 1 August 1944. Polish forces took control of substantial parts of the city and resisted the German-led forces until 2 October (a total of 63 days). With the Poles receiving no aid from the approaching Red Army, the Germans eventually defeated the insurrectionists and burned the city, quelling the Uprising on 2 October 1944. Other major Home Army city risings included Operation Ostra Brama in Wilno and the Lwów Uprising. The Home Army also prepared for a rising in Kraków but aborted due to various circumstances. While the Home Army managed to liberate a number of places from German control—for example, the Lublin area, where regional structures were able to set up a functioning government—they ultimately failed to secure sufficient territory to enable the government-in-exile to return to Poland due to Soviet hostility.

The Home Army also sabotaged German rail- and road-transports to the Eastern Front in the Soviet Union. Richard J. Crampton estimated that an eighth of all German transports to the Eastern Front were destroyed or substantially delayed due to Home Army operations.

Assassination of Nazi leaders

The Polish Resistance carried out dozens of attacks on German commanders in Poland, the largest series being that codenamed "Operation Heads". Dozens of additional assassinations were carried out, the best-known being:
 Operation Bürkl—Franz Bürkl, SS-Oberscharführer, Gestapo officer, and commandant of the Pawiak prison, assassinated 7 September 1943.
 Operation Kutschera—Franz Kutschera, SS-Brigadeführer and Generalmajor of Ordnungspolizei; SS and Police Leader of the Warsaw District, assassinated 1 February 1944.

Weapons and equipment

As a clandestine army operating in an enemy-occupied country and separated by over a thousand kilometers from any friendly territory, the Home Army faced unique challenges in acquiring arms and equipment, though it was able to overcome these difficulties to some extent and to field tens of thousands of armed soldiers. Nevertheless, the difficult conditions meant that only infantry forces armed with light weapons could be fielded. Any use of artillery, armor or aircraft was impossible (except for a few instances during the Warsaw Uprising, such as the Kubuś armored car). Even these light-infantry units were as a rule armed with a mixture of weapons of various types, usually in quantities sufficient to arm only a fraction of a unit's soldiers.

Home Army arms and equipment came mostly from four sources: arms that had been buried by the Polish armies on battlefields after the 1939 invasion of Poland, arms purchased or captured from the Germans and their allies, arms clandestinely manufactured by the Home Army itself, and arms received from Allied air drops.

From arms caches hidden in 1939, the Home Army obtained 614 heavy machine guns, 1,193 light machine guns, 33,052 rifles, 6,732 pistols, 28 antitank light field guns, 25 antitank rifles, and 43,154 hand grenades. However, due to their inadequate preservation, which had to be improvised in the chaos of the September Campaign, most of the guns were in poor condition. Of those that had been buried in the ground and had been dug up in 1944 during preparations for Operation Tempest, only 30% were usable.

Arms were sometimes purchased on the black market from German soldiers or their allies, or stolen from German supply depots or transports. Efforts to capture weapons from the Germans also proved highly successful. Raids were conducted on trains carrying equipment to the front, as well as on guardhouses and gendarmerie posts. Sometimes weapons were taken from individual German soldiers accosted in the street. During the Warsaw Uprising, the Home Army even managed to capture several German armored vehicles, most notably a Jagdpanzer 38 Hetzer light tank destroyer renamed  and an armored troop transport SdKfz 251 renamed .

Arms were clandestinely manufactured by the Home Army in its own secret workshops, and by Home Army members working in German armaments factories. In this way the Home Army was able to procure submachine guns (copies of British Stens, indigenous Błyskawicas and KIS), pistols (Vis), flamethrowers, explosive devices, road mines, and Filipinka and Sidolówka hand grenades. Hundreds of people were involved in the manufacturing effort. The Home Army did not produce its own ammunition, but relied on supplies stolen by Polish workers from German-run factories.

The final source of supply was Allied air drops, which was the only way to obtain more exotic, highly useful equipment such as plastic explosives and antitank weapons such as the British PIAT. During the war, 485 air-drop missions from the West (about half of them flown by Polish airmen) delivered some 600 tons of supplies for the Polish resistance. Besides equipment, the planes also parachuted in highly qualified instructors (Cichociemni), 316 of whom were inserted into Poland during the war.

Air drops were infrequent. Deliveries from the west were limited by Stalin's refusal to let the planes land on Soviet territory, the low priority placed by the British on flights to Poland; and the extremely heavy losses sustained by Polish Special Duties Flight personnel. Britain and the United States attached more importance to not antagonizing Stalin than they did to the aspirations of the Poles to regain their national sovereignty, particularly after Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941 and the Soviets joined the Western Allies in the war against Germany.

In the end, despite all efforts, most Home Army forces had inadequate weaponry. In 1944, when the Home Army was at its peak strength (200,000–600,000, according to various estimates), the Home Army had enough weaponry for only about 32,000 soldiers." On 1 August 1944, when the Warsaw Uprising began, only a sixth of Home Army fighters in Warsaw were armed.

Relations with ethnic groups

Jews

Home Army members' attitudes toward Jews varied widely from unit to unit, and the topic remains controversial. The Home Army answered to the National Council of the Polish government-in-exile, where some Jews served in leadership positions (e.g. Ignacy Schwarzbart and Szmul Zygielbojm), though there were no Jewish representatives in the Government Delegation for Poland. Traditionally, Polish historiography has presented the Home Army interactions with Jews in a positive light, while Jewish historiography has been mostly negative; most Jewish authors attribute the Home Army's hostility to endemic antisemitism in Poland. More recent scholarship has presented a mixed, ambivalent view of Home Army–Jewish relations. Both "profoundly disturbing acts of violence as well as extraordinary acts of aid and compassion" have been reported. In an analysis by Joshua D. Zimmerman, postwar testimonies of Holocaust survivors reveal that their experiences with the Home Army were mixed even if predominantly negative. Jews trying to seek refuge from Nazi genocidal policies were often exposed to greater danger by open resistance to German occupation.

Members of the Home Army were named Righteous Among the Nations for risking their lives to save Jews, examples include Jan Karski, Aleksander Kamiński, Stefan Korboński, Henryk Woliński, Jan Żabiński, Władysław Bartoszewski, Mieczysław Fogg, Henryk Iwański, and Jan Dobraczyński.

Daily operations
A Jewish partisan detachment served in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, and another in . The Home Army provided training and supplies to the Warsaw Ghetto's Jewish Combat Organization. It is likely that more Jews fought in the Warsaw Uprising than in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, some fought in both. Thousands of Jews joined, or claimed to join, the Home Army in order to survive in hiding, but Jews serving in the Home Army were the exception rather than the rule. Most Jews in hiding could not pass as ethnic Poles and would have faced deadly consequences if discovered.

In February 1942, the Home Army Operational Command's Office of Information and Propaganda set up a Section for Jewish Affairs, directed by Henryk Woliński. This section collected data about the situation of the Jewish population, drafted reports, and sent information to London. It also centralized contacts between Polish and Jewish military organizations. The Home Army also supported the Relief Council for Jews in Poland (Żegota) as well as the formation of Jewish resistance organizations.

Holocaust
From 1940 onward, the Home Army courier Jan Karski delivered the first eyewitness account of the Holocaust to the Western powers, after having personally visited the Warsaw Ghetto and a Nazi concentration camp. Another crucial role was played by Witold Pilecki, who was the only person to volunteer to be imprisoned at Auschwitz (where he would spend three and a half years) to organize a resistance on the inside and to gather information on the atrocities occurring there to inform the Western Allies about the fate of the Jewish population. Home Army reports from March 1943 described crimes committed by the Germans against the Jewish populace. AK commander General Stefan Rowecki estimated that 640,000 people had been murdered in Auschwitz between 1940 and March 1943, including 66,000 ethnic Poles and 540,000 Jews from various countries (this figure was revised later to 500,000). The Home Army started carrying out death sentences for szmalcowniks in Warsaw in the summer of 1943.

Antony Polonsky observed that "the attitude of the military underground to the genocide is both more complex and more controversial [than its approach towards szmalcowniks]. Throughout the period when it was being carried out, the Home Army was preoccupied with preparing for ... [the moment when] Nazi rule in Poland collapsed. It was determined to avoid premature military action and to conserve its strength (and weapons) for the crucial confrontation that, it was assumed, would determine the fate of Poland. ... [However,] to the Home Army, the Jews were not a part of 'our nation' and ... action to defend them was not to be taken if it endangered [the Home Army's] other objectives." He added that "it is probably unrealistic to have expected the Home Army—which was neither as well armed nor as well organized as its propaganda claimed—to have been able to do much to aid the Jews. The fact remains that its leadership did not want to do so." Rowecki's attitudes shifted in the following months as the brutal reality of the Holocaust became more apparent, and the Polish public support for the Jewish resistance increased. Rowecki was willing to provide Jewish fighters with aid and resources when it contributed to "the greater war effort", but had concluded that providing large quantities of supplies to the Jewish resistance would be futile. This reasoning was the norm among the Allies, who believed that the Holocaust could only be halted by a significant military action.

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

The Home Army provided the Warsaw Ghetto with firearms, ammunition, and explosives, but only after it was convinced of the eagerness of the Jewish Combat Organization (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ŻOB) to fight, and after Władysław Sikorski's intervention on the Organization's behalf. Zimmerman describes the supplies as "limited but real". Jewish fighters of the Jewish Military Union (Żydowski Związek Wojskowy, ŻZW) received from the Home Army, among other things, 2 heavy machine guns, 4 light machine guns, 21 submachine guns, 30 rifles, 50 pistols, and over 400 grenades. Some supplies were also provided to the ŻOB, but less than to ŻZW with whom the Home Army had closer ties and ideological similarities. Antoni Chruściel, commander of the Home Army in Warsaw, ordered the entire armory of the Wola district transferred to the ghetto. In January 1943 the Home Army delivered a larger shipment of 50 pistols, 50 hand grenades, and several kilograms of explosives, along with a number of smaller shipments that carried a total of 70 pistols, 10 rifles, 2 hand machine guns, 1 light machine gun, ammunition, and over 150 kilograms of explosives. The number of supplies provided to the ghetto resistance has been sometimes described as insufficient, as the Home Army faced a number of dilemmas which forced it to provide no more than limited assistance to the Jewish resistance, such as supply shortages and the inability to arm its own troops, the view (shared by most of the Jewish resistance) that any wide-scale uprising in 1943 would be premature and futile, and the difficulty of coordinating with the internally divided Jewish resistance, coupled with the pro-Soviet attitude of the ŻOB. During the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Home Army units tried to blow up the Ghetto wall twice, carried out diversionary actions outside the Ghetto walls, and attacked German sentries sporadically near the Ghetto walls. According to Marian Fuks, the Ghetto uprising would not have been possible without supplies from the Polish Home Army.

A year later, during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, the Zośka Battalion liberated hundreds of Jewish inmates from the Gęsiówka section of the Warsaw concentration camp.

Attitude to fugitives

Because it was the largest Polish resistance organization, the Home Army's attitude towards Jewish fugitives often determined their fate. According to Antony Polonsky the Home Army saw Jewish fugitives as security risks. At the same time, AK's "paper mills" supplied forged identification documents to many Jewish fugitives, enabling them to pass as Poles. Home Army published a leaflet in 1943 stating that "Every Pole is obligated to help those in hiding. Those who refuse them aid will be punished on the basis of...treason to the Polish Nation". Nevertheless, Jewish historians have asserted that the main cause for the low survival rates of escaping Jews was the antisemitism of the Polish population.

Attitudes towards Jews in the Home Army were mixed. A few AK units actively hunted down Jews, and in particular two district commanders in the northeast of Poland (Władysław Liniarski of Białystok and Janusz Szlaski of Nowogródek) openly and routinely persecuted Jewish partisans and fugitives; however, these were the only two provinces, out of seventeen, where such orders were issued by provincial commanders. The extent of such behaviors in the Home Army overall has been disputed; Tadeusz Piotrowski wrote that the bulk of the Home Army's antisemitic behavior can be ascribed to a small minority of members, often affiliated with the far-right National Democracy (ND, or Endecja) party, whose National Armed Forces organization was mostly integrated into the Home Army in 1944. Adam Puławski has suggested that some of these incidents are better understood in the context of the Polish–Soviet conflict, as some of the Soviet-affiliated partisan units that AK units attacked or was attacked by had a sizable Jewish presence. In general, AK units in the east were more likely to be hostile towards Jewish partisans, who in turn were more closely associated with the Soviet underground, while AK units in the west were more helpful towards the Jews. The Home Army had a more favorable attitude towards Jewish civilians and was more hesitant or hostile towards independent Jewish partisans, whom it suspected of pro-Soviet sympathies. General Rowecki believed that antisemitic attitudes in eastern Poland were related to Jewish involvement with Soviet partisans. Some AK units were friendly to Jews, and in Hanaczów Home Army officers hid and protected an entire 250-person Jewish community, and supplied a Jewish Home Army platoon. The Home Army leadership punished a number of perpetrators of antisemitic violence in its ranks, in some cases sentencing them to death.

Most of the underground press was sympathetic towards Jews, and the Home Army's Bureau of Information and Propaganda was led by operatives who were pro-Jewish and represented the liberal wing of Home Army; however, the bureau's anti-communist sub-division, created as a response to communist propaganda, was led by operatives who held strong anti-communist and anti-Jewish views, including the Żydokomuna stereotype. The perceived association between Jews and communists was actively reinforced by Operation Antyk, whose initial reports "tended to conflate communists with Jews, dangerously disseminating the notion that Jewish loyalties were to Soviet Russia and communism rather than to Poland", and which repeated the notion that antisemitism was a "useful tool in the struggle against Soviet Russia".

Lithuanians

Although the Lithuanian and Polish resistance movements had common enemies—Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union—they began working together only in 1944–1945, after the Soviet reoccupation, when both fought the Soviet occupiers. The main obstacle to unity was a long-standing territorial dispute over the Vilnius Region.

The Lithuanian Activist Front (Lietuvos Aktyvistų Frontas, or LAF) had cooperated with Nazi operations against Poles during the German occupation. In autumn 1943, the Home Army performed retaliatory operations against the Nazis' Lithuanian supporters, mainly the Lithuanian Schutzmannschaft battalions, the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force, and the Lithuanian Secret Police, killing hundreds of mostly Lithuanian policemen and other collaborators during the first half of 1944. In response, the Lithuanian Sonderkommando, who had already killed hundreds of Polish civilians since 1941 (particularly the Ponary massacre), intensified their operations against the Poles.

In April 1944, the Home Army in the Vilnius Region attempted to open negotiations with Povilas Plechavičius, commander of the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force, and proposed a non-aggression pact and cooperation against Nazi Germany. The Lithuanian side refused and demanded that the Poles either leave the Vilnius region (disputed between Poles and Lithuanians) or subordinate themselves to the Lithuanians' struggle against the Soviets. In the May 1944 Battle of Murowana Oszmianka, the Home Army dealt a substantial blow to the Nazi-sponsored Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force, which resulted in a low-level civil war between anti-Nazi Poles and pro-Nazi Lithuanians that was encouraged by the German authorities; it culminated with the June 1944 massacres of Polish and Lithuanian civilians in the villages of Glitiškės (Glinciszki) and Dubingiai (Dubinki) respectively.

Postwar assessments of the Home Army's activities in Lithuania have been controversial. In 1993, the Home Army's activities there were investigated by a special Lithuanian government commission. Only in recent years have Polish and Lithuanian historians been able to approach consensus, though still differing in their interpretations of many events.

Ukrainians

In the Southeastern part of occupied Polish territories, there have been long-standing tensions between the Polish and Ukrainian populations. Poland's plans to restore its prewar borders were opposed by the Ukrainians, and some Ukrainian groups' collaboration with Nazi Germany had discredited their partisans as potential Polish allies. While the Polish government-in-exile considered tentative plans about providing a limited autonomy for Ukrainians, in 1942 the staff of the Home Army of Lviv recommended deporting 1–1.5 million Ukrainians to the Soviet Union and settling the remainder in other parts of Poland once the war ended. The situation escalated the next year when the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Українська повстанська армія, Ukrayins'ka Povstans'ka Armiya, UPA), a Ukrainian nationalist force and the military arm of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Організація Українських Націоналістів, Orhanizatsiya Ukrayins'kykh Natsionalistiv, OUN), directed most of its attacks against Poles and Jews. Stepan Bandera, one of UPA's leaders, and his followers concluded that the war would end in the exhaustion of both Germany and the Soviet Union, leaving only the Poles—who laid claim to East Galicia (viewed by the Ukrainians as western Ukraine, and by the Poles as Kresy)—as a significant force, and therefore the Poles had to be weakened before the war's end.

The OUN decided to attack Polish civilians, who constituted about a third of the population of the disputed territories. It equated Ukrainian independence with ethnic homogeneity, which meant the Polish presence had to be completely removed. By February 1943 the OUN began a deliberate campaign of killing Polish civilians. In massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, beginning in the spring of 1943, 100,000 Poles were killed. OUN forces targeted Polish villages, which prompted the formation of Polish self-defense units (e.g., the Przebraże Defence) and fights between the Home Army and the OUN. The Germans encouraged both sides against each other; Erich Koch said: "We have to do everything possible so that a Pole, when meeting a Ukrainian, will be ready to kill him, and conversely, a Ukrainian will be ready to kill the Pole."  A German commissioner from Sarny, when local Poles complained about massacres, answered: "You want Sikorski, the Ukrainians want Bandera. Fight each other." On 10 July 1943, Zygmunt Rumel was sent to talk with local Ukrainians with the goal of ending the massacres; the mission was unsuccessful, and the Banderites killed the Polish delegation. On 20 July that year the Home Army command decided to establish partisan units in Volhynia. Several formations were created, most notably, in January 1944, the 27th Home Army Infantry Division. Between January and March 1944, the division fought 16 major battles with the UPA, expanding its operational base and securing Polish forces against the main attack. One of the largest battles between the Home Army and the UPA took place in , where local self-defence forces managed to fend off two attacks. In March 1944 the Home Army also carried out reprisal attack against UPA in the village of Sahryń, remembered as "Sahryń massacre", ended in ethnic cleansing operations in which about 700 Ukrainian civilians were killed.

The Polish government-in-exile in London was taken by surprise; it did not expect Ukrainian anti-Polish actions of such magnitude. There is no evidence that the Polish government-in-exile contemplated a general policy of revenge against the Ukrainians, but local Poles, including Home Army commanders, engaged in retaliatory actions. Polish partisans attacked the OUN, assassinated Ukrainian commanders, and carried out operations against Ukrainian villages. Retaliatory operations aimed at intimidating the Ukrainian population contributed to increased support for the UPA. The Home Army command tried to limit operations against Ukrainian civilians to a minimum. According to Grzegorz Motyka, the Polish operations resulted in 10,000 to 15,000 Ukrainian deaths in 1943–47, including 8,000-10,000 on territory of post-war Poland. From February to April 1945, mainly in Rzeszowszczyzna (the Rzeszów area), Polish units (including affiliates of the Home Army) carried out retaliatory attacks in which about 3,000 Ukrainians were killed; one of the most infamous ones is known as the Pawłokoma massacre.

By mid-1944, most of the disputed regions were occupied by the Soviet Red Army. Polish partisans disbanded or went underground, as did most Ukrainian partisans. Both the Poles and the Ukrainians would increasingly concentrate on the Soviets as their primary enemy – and both would ultimately fail.

Relations with the Soviet Union

Home Army relations with the Soviet Red Army grew worse as the war progressed. The Soviet Union invaded Poland on 17 September 1939 after the German invasion that began on 1 September 1939; even though the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Soviets saw Polish partisans loyal to the Polish government-in-exile more as a potential obstacle to Soviet plans to control postwar Poland than as a potential ally. On orders from the Soviet Stavka (high command) issued on 22 June 1943, Soviet partisans engaged Polish partisans in combat; it has also been claimed that they attacked the Poles more frequently than the Germans.

In late 1943 the actions of Soviet partisans, who had been ordered to destroy Home Army forces, even resulted in limited uneasy cooperation between some Home Army units and German forces. While the Home Army still treated the Germans as the enemy and conducted operations against them, some Polish units in the Nowogródek and Wilno areas accepted them when the Germans offered arms and supplies to the Home Army to be used against the Soviet partisans. However, such arrangements were purely tactical and indicated no ideological collaboration, as demonstrated by France's Vichy regime or Norway's Quisling regime. The Poles' main motive was to acquire intelligence on the Germans and to obtain much-needed equipment. There were no known joint Polish–German operations, and the Germans were unsuccessful in recruiting the Poles to fight exclusively against the Soviet partisans. Furthermore, most cooperative efforts between local Home Army commanders and the Germans were condemned by Home Army headquarters.

With the Eastern Front entering Polish territories in 1944, the Home Army established an uneasy truce with the Soviets. Even so, the main Red Army and NKVD forces conducted operations against Home Army partisans, including during or directly after Poland's Operation Tempest, which the Poles had envisioned to be a joint Polish–Soviet operation against the retreating Germans which would also establish Polish claims to those territories. The Home Army helped Soviet units with scouting assistance, uprisings, and assistance in liberating some cities (e.g., Operation Ostra Brama in Vilnius, and the Lwów Uprising), only to find that Home Army troops were arrested, imprisoned, or executed immediately afterwards.

Long after the war, Soviet forces continued engaging many Home Army soldiers, who received the moniker of "cursed soldiers".

Postwar

The Home Army was officially disbanded on 19 January 1945 to avoid civil war and armed conflict with the Soviets. However, many former Home Army units decided to continue operations. The Soviet Union, and the Polish communist government that it controlled, viewed the underground, still loyal to the Polish government-in-exile, as a force to be extirpated before they could gain complete control of Poland. Future Secretary General of the Polish United Workers' Party, Władysław Gomułka, is quoted as saying: "Soldiers of the AK are a hostile element which must be removed without mercy." Another prominent Polish communist, Roman Zambrowski, said that the Home Army had to be "exterminated."

The first Home Army structure designed primarily to deal with the Soviet threat had been NIE, formed in mid-1943. Its aim was not to engage Soviet forces in combat, but to observe them and to gather intelligence while the Polish Government-in-Exile decided how to deal with the Soviets; at that time, the exiled government still believed in the possibility of constructive negotiations with the Soviets. On 7 May 1945 NIE was disbanded and transformed into the Armed Forces Delegation for Poland (Delegatura Sił Zbrojnych na Kraj), but it was disbanded on 8 August 1945 to stop partisan resistance.

The first Polish communist government formed in July 1944—the Polish Committee of National Liberation—declined to accept jurisdiction over Home Army soldiers; as a result, for over a year Soviet agencies such as the NKVD took responsibility for disarming the Home Army. By the end of the war, around 60,000 Home Army soldiers were arrested, 50,000 of whom were deported to Soviet gulags and prisons; most of these soldiers had been taken captive by the Soviets during or after Operation Tempest when many Home Army units tried to work together with the Soviets in a nationwide uprising against the Germans. Other Home Army veterans were arrested when they approached Polish communist government officials after having been promised amnesty. Home Army soldiers stopped trusting the government after a number of broken promises in the first few years of communist control.

The third post-Home Army organization was Freedom and Independence (Wolność i Niezawisłość, WiN). Its primary goal was not fighting; rather, it was designed to help Home Army soldiers transition from partisan to civilian life; while secrecy was necessary in light of increasing persecution of Home Army veterans by the communist government. WiN was in great need of funds to pay for false documents and provide resources for the partisans, many of whom had lost their homes and life savings in the war. WiN was far from efficient: it was viewed as an enemy of the state, starved of resources, and a vocal faction advocated armed resistance against the Soviets and their Polish proxies. In the second half of 1945, the Soviet NKVD and the newly created Polish secret police, the Department of Security (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa, UB), managed to convince several Home Army and WiN leaders that they wanted to offer amnesty to Home Army members, and gained information about large numbers of Home Army and WiN people and resources in the following months. By the time the (imprisoned) Home Army and WiN leaders realised their mistake, the organizations had been crippled, with thousands of their members arrested. WiN was finally disbanded in 1952. By 1947 a colonel of the communist forces declared that "The terrorist and political underground [had] ceased to be a threatening force, though there [were] still men of the forests" to be dealt with.

The persecution of the Home Army was only part of the Stalinist repressions in Poland. In 1944–56, approximately 2 million people were arrested; over 20,000, including Pilecki, organizer of the resistance in Auschwitz, were executed in communist prisons, and 6 million Polish citizens (every third adult Pole) were classified as "reactionary" or "criminal elements", and were subjected to spying by state agencies.

Most Home Army soldiers were captured by the NKVD or by Poland's UB political police. They were interrogated and imprisoned on various charges such as "fascism". Many were sent to Gulags, executed, or "disappeared". For example, all the members of Batalion Zośka, which had fought in the Warsaw Uprising, were locked up in communist prisons between 1944 and 1956. In 1956 an amnesty released 35,000 former Home Army soldiers from prisons.

Even then, some partisans remained in the countryside, and were unwilling or unable to rejoin the community; they became known as the cursed soldiers. Stanisław Marchewka "Ryba" was killed in 1957, and the last AK partisan, Józef "Lalek" Franczak, was killed in 1963 – almost two decades after World War II had ended. It was only four years later, in 1967, that Adam Boryczka—a soldier of AK and a member of the elite, Britain-trained Cichociemny ("Silent Unseen") intelligence and support group—was released from prison. Until the end of the People's Republic of Poland, Home Army soldiers remained under investigation by the secret police, and it was only in 1989, after the fall of communism, that the sentences of Home Army soldiers were finally declared null and void by Polish courts.

Many monuments to the Home Army have since been erected in Poland, including the Polish Underground State and Home Army Monument near the Sejm building in Warsaw, unveiled in 1999. The Home Army is also commemorated in the Home Army Museum in Kraków and in the Warsaw Uprising Museum in Warsaw.

See also
 Gray Ranks
 Polish contribution to World War II
 Polish resistance movement in World War II
 Western betrayal

Notes

References
Notes

Bibliography

External links

 Armia Krajowa Museum in Krakow
 Polish resistance – AK – Site edited by the London Branch of the Polish Home Army Ex-Servicemen Association
 Warsaw Uprising Museum
  Archiwum Pomorskie Armii Krajowej
 The Home Army After July 1944 Polish Underground Soldiers 1944–1963 – The Untold Story

Polish underground organisations during World War II
Military units and formations of Poland in World War II
Polish Underground State
Guerrilla organizations
World War II resistance movements
1942 establishments in Poland
1945 disestablishments in Poland
Military units and formations established in 1942
Military units and formations disestablished in 1945
Anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Europe
Polish resistance during World War II

Home Army


A Kestrel for a Knave is a novel by English author Barry Hines, published in 1968. Set in an unspecified mining area in Northern England, the book follows Billy Casper, a young working-class boy troubled at home and at school, who finds and trains a kestrel whom he names "Kes".

The book received a wider audience when it was adapted into the film Kes in 1969; Hines wrote the screenplay with director Ken Loach (credited as Kenneth Loach) and producer Tony Garnett. The film adaptation has since become regarded as one of the greatest of British films.

Today, the novel is often used in Key Stage 4 assessment in the United Kingdom, as part of GCSE English courses. The novel's title is taken from a poem found in the Book of Saint Albans. In medieval England, the only bird a knave (male servant, or man of low class) was legally allowed to keep was a kestrel.

Plot
South Yorkshire, the 1960s. In the opening pages of the book, we see Billy and his half-brother Jud sleeping in the same bed in a troubled household. Billy tries to encourage Jud to get up to go to work, but Jud only responds by punching him. Soon afterwards, Billy attempts to leave for his paper round, only to discover that Jud has stolen his bicycle. As a result, Billy is late and has to deliver the newspapers on foot.

There is a flashback to several months before, when Billy returns home to find a man whom he does not recognize leaving his house. He asks his mother and finds out he is a man she had come home with the night before. It becomes obvious that Billy's father is absent. His mother then tells him to go to the shop to get some cigarettes, but he instead steals a book from the local bookshop and returns home to read it. Jud comes back drunk from a night out. Still in flashback, the next scene takes place at a farm. Billy sees a kestrel's nest and approaches it. Billy is then approached by the farmer and his daughter. At first, the farmer tells Billy to "bugger off" but when he realizes that Billy was looking for a kestrel, he soon takes an interest. The flashback ends.

Later on in the day, Billy is at school, where Mr Crossley is taking the register. After the name Fisher, Billy shouts out 'German Bight', inadvertently causing the teacher to make a mistake. The class then proceeds to the hall for an assembly run by the strict head teacher, Mr Gryce. During the Lord's Prayer, Billy starts to daydream, and after the prayer has finished, Billy remains standing after the rest of the people in the hall have sat down. Billy is told to report to Gryce's room after assembly. Billy goes to Gryce and gets caned. He then goes to a class with Mr Farthing, who is discussing 'Fact and Fiction'. One of the pupils, Anderson, tells a story about tadpoles. Then Billy is told to tell a story, and tells a story about his kestrel. Mr Farthing takes an interest. The class then has to write a tall story, and Billy writes about a day when his father comes back home and Jud leaves to join the army. After the lesson, Billy gets into a fight with a boy called MacDowall, which is eventually broken up and warned by Mr. Farthing.

After the break, Billy goes to physical education (PE) with Mr. Sugden. Billy doesn't have PE kit because his mother refuses to pay for it, so he is forced to wear clothes that do not fit him instead. He goes onto the football pitch and is told to play in goal. After a very long lesson, which involves Billy performing acrobatics on the goalpost, the class goes back inside and each takes a shower. After Billy intentionally lets in the winning goal to end the lesson, he is humiliated by Mr. Sugden, who forces him to take a cold shower. After this, Billy goes straight home to feed Kes. He takes her out and flies her, and is approached by Mr. Farthing, who is apparently impressed by Billy's skill. Mr. Farthing then leaves, and Billy goes out to place Jud's bet. However, he finds out that the horse that Jud intends to bet on is unlikely to win, and instead uses Jud's money to buy a portion of fish and chips, and some meat for his kestrel.

Billy returns to school, and whilst sitting in a maths lesson, sees Jud walking towards the school. The lesson finishes, and Billy leaves hurriedly. He tries to hide from Jud and falls asleep before he bumps into Gryce, who reminds him that he is supposed to be in a Youth Employment Meeting. Billy goes along to his Youth Employment Meeting, and the Youth Employment Officer finds it very difficult to recommend anything, as Billy claims that he has no hobbies. After the Youth Employment Meeting, Billy goes straight home and finds that Kes has disappeared. He frantically searches for her and returns home. Jud is there, and he tells Billy that the horse he was supposed to place a bet on won and that he has killed Kes. Billy then calls Jud a "fuckin' bastard" and has a fight with him. His mother criticizes Billy's language, and Billy runs away. Another flashback takes place in which Billy visits the cinema with his father. When they return home, Billy's father finds that his wife has been having an affair with Billy's 'Uncle Mick'. Billy's father punches Mick and leaves the house. After the flashback has ended, Billy returns home, buries the kestrel and goes to bed.

The story is set in only one day, apart from the flashback passages. However, the film version, directed by Kenneth Loach from Barry Hines's screenplay, dispenses with the flashbacks and portrays the events in a linear fashion.

Background
Barry Hines had published his debut novel, The Blinder, in 1966, while still working full-time as a P.E. teacher. Hines wanted to write a novel about the education system and took inspiration from his younger brother Richard, who had tamed a hawk called Kes. He wrote a first draft while teaching, but received a bursary from the BBC as a result of his successful radio play Billy's Last Stand, which he used to take a sabbatical on the Isle of Elba and complete the novel.

Meanwhile, film and television producer Tony Garnett approached Hines about the prospect of contributing an episode to The Wednesday Play series. Hines turned down the offer due to the novel he was currently working on, but Garnett was intrigued and asked Hines to send him a manuscript of the finished project. Impressed by the manuscript, Garnett and Loach bought the rights to the film for their new production company, Kestrel Films, before the novel had been published. Disney later attempted to buy the rights on the condition that the ending be changed from the novel so that the kestrel survives, a condition refused by Hines.

Reception and legacy
A Kestrel for a Knave received positive critical reviews upon its original publication. Penelope Maslin noted Hines's "extraordinary visual sense .... subtlety and economy, added to an imagination quite out of the ordinary, which make A Kestrel for a Knave a book to remember."

In 2009, The Observer listed it as one of the "1000 novels everyone must read", describing it as a "compelling and haunting portrait of British working-class youth". In a 2010 retrospective review, Imogen Carter acclaimed "the novel's dazzling natural imagery, reminiscent of Seamus Heaney's 1966 poetry collection, Death of a Naturalist".

Upon Hines's death in 2016, Barnsley-based poet Ian McMillan praised the novel for its "celebratory" presentation of the local dialect and culture, writing that "here in the former South Yorkshire coalfield A Kestrel for a Knave is our Moby-Dick, our Things Fall Apart, our Great Gatsby."

The book has been published around the world and translated into Chinese, Japanese and Russian. It was republished as a Penguin Modern Classic in 1999.

Alongside the film adaptation, it has seen adaptations for the stage and radio. A ballet adaptation was performed at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre in 2014 to critical acclaim.

First introduced to the UK syllabus in the 1970s, the book is often taught on GCSE English Literature courses.

In 2019, comedian and former teacher Greg Davies presented a BBC Four documentary about Hines, Looking for Kes, in which he travelled to Hines's hometown to interview people who knew the author.

References

External links
 The 50th anniversary of the publication of A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines

1968 British novels
British novels adapted into films
Novels about birds
Novels set in Yorkshire
Michael Joseph books
Novels set in the 1960s

A Kestrel for a Knave


Artur Domosławski (born 1967) is a Polish journalist and writer.

Life
Artur Domosławski graduated from the Theatre Studies Department at the Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw. Between 1991 and 2011, he worked as a journalist for the daily Gazeta Wyborcza. Since 2011, he has written for the weekly Polityka, and also for the Polish edition of the monthly Le Monde diplomatique.

As a writer Domosławski covers mostly topics related to Latin America, devoting two books to it: Latin American Fever (, 2004) and Death in Amazonia (, 2013). He has also covered the alter-globalization movement and North-South relations in The World is Not For Sale (, 2002) and Rebellious America: Seventeen Dialogues on the Dark Sides of the Freedom Empire (). In his books, Domosławski exposes economic and political links by which Western countries inflict on the global South.

In 2010, Domosławski became widely recognised thanks to his biography of Ryszard Kapuściński titled Kapuściński non-fiction, which presented Kapuściński without omitting both positive and negative aspects of his work and details of personal life. Kapuściński's widow, Alicja Kapuścińska, sought an injunction against Domosławski's book, claiming defamation and invasion of privacy. The injunction was rejected by the Polish court on the grounds that she had chosen to give Domosławski access to her husband's archive. In an interview with The Guardian Domosławski said: "Kapuściński was experimenting in journalism. He wasn't aware he had crossed the line between journalism and literature. I still think his books are wonderful and precious. But ultimately, they belong to fiction." Domosławski's monograph was translated to English in 2012 by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and first published by Verso Books as Ryszard Kapuściński. A Life in 2012. Lloyd-Jones's translation received the 2013 Found in Translation Award. The book was also translated into French, Spanish, Hungarian, Dutch, and Italian, among others.

Domosławski received the Journalist of the Year Award from  magazine (2010) and the 2008 Beata Pawlak Award. In 2017, he was nominated for the Nike Award.

Works

 Chrystus bez karabinu: o pontyfikacie Jana Pawła [Christ Without a Rifle: On the Pontificate of John Paul II], Warszawa: Prószyński i S-ka, 1999.
 Świat nie na sprzedaż: rozmowy o globalizacji i kontestacji [The World is Not For Sale], Warszawa: Sic!, Gazeta Wyborcza, 2002.
 Gorączka latynoamerykańska [Latin American Fever], Warszawa: Świat Książki, 2004.
 Ameryka zbuntowana. Siedemnaście dialogów o ciemnych stronach imperium wolności [Rebellious America], Warszawa: Świat Książki, 2007.
 Kapuściński non-fiction [Ryszard Kapuściński: A Life], Warszawa: Świat Książki, 2010.
 Śmierć w Amazonii [Death in Amazonia], Warszawa: Wielka Litera, 2013.
 Wykluczeni, Warszawa: Wielka Litera, 2016.

References

Living people
1967 births
Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw alumni
Polish journalists
21st-century Polish male writers
21st-century Polish non-fiction writers
Polish male non-fiction writers
Writers from Warsaw

Artur Domosławski


Abington Art Center is an art center built in 1939, and located in Abington Township, a northern suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The center resides within Alverthorpe Manor and the surrounding 27-acre grounds that were formerly the residence of Lessing J. Rosenwald and his family. The art center features a studio school, innovation center, exhibition galleries and a sculpture park. The building itself features a vintage elevator from the 1930s.

Early beginnings
The Abington Art Center was started in 1965 as the Old York Road Art Guild, by a group of women who believed in the "benefit of cultural enrichment for individual and community life to be derived from creative artistic expression", the guild's educational elements were brought under a separate non-profit entity called Abington Art Center. On Christmas Day 1969, a rare book and print collector, Lessing J. Rosenwald and his wife Edith, donated their estate, Alverthorpe Manor, to the Abington community for the purpose of allowing residents to gather for cultural and recreational purposes. Shortly afterwards, the organization appointed its first paid director and the guild formally ended.

Development
In 1981, the center expanded into the old gallery wing of Alverthorpe Manor when the Rosenwald Collection was moved to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. This doubled the instruction space as well as the center's student capacity. A  sculpture garden was opened in 1990.  In 1996, the art center expanded within the building and initiated a 5-year renovation project designed to transform Alverthorpe Manor from a private residence to a public place. Currently, the center contains a gallery, six studios, classrooms, and a sculpture park, and stages outdoor events throughout the year.

Art exhibitions and community outreach
The  of lawn and woodlands that make up the Sculpture Park has included works by Joy Episalla, Robert Lawrance Lobe, Jeanne Jaffe, Thomas Matsuda, Brian McCutcheon, Steven Siegel, Steve Tobin, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Jay Walker, and Winifred Lutz.

In 2003, Abington Art Center devised a plan for the purposes of developing Alverthorpe Manor property into a 27-acre "cultural campus" within a suburban community. The plan was developed by Wallace Roberts & Todd. Leora Brecher, a sculptor who taught ceramics at the center for 18 years, said, "It's different here compared to other art centers I've seen. As well as a studio school, it has the sculpture garden and outreach to the community. Other places are more about teaching than the public." The center has hosted the annual "Touch the Future" juried art show, featuring the work of young artists from the area. In 2005, the center received a $500,000 pledge of a matching grant from the state of Pennsylvania, with the objective of assisting the economic development goals of the surrounding municipalities. The first phase of development was completed in 2011.

Finances
Abington Art Center is a small nonprofit organization with an estimated budget of less than $1 million. Its income comes from classes, workshops, and facility rentals for weddings and other affairs (38 percent); foundations (24 percent); membership dues (11 percent); corporate and government support (9 percent); and gift shop sales, fund-raisers and other sources (18 percent).

References

External links

Museums in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania
Art museums and galleries in Pennsylvania
Modern art museums in the United States
Contemporary art galleries in the United States

Abington Art Center