Wasilewska at times favoured incorporation of Poland into the Soviet Union as a republic . She explained away Stalin 's deadly purges by arguing that death of an innocent person was preferable to the risk of demise of the Soviet Union . The persecutions and victims , she felt , were an unavoidable cost of future progress or resulted from licentious conduct by functionaries . She intervened when Poles whom she knew were deported to distant regions of the Soviet Union and engaged in relief activities , such as sending parcels to deportees . Wasilewska 's interventions freed her fellow Polish communists ( kept in detention by Lavrentiy Beria even after the official amnesty for Poles negotiated by the government of Władysław Sikorski ) , the poet Broniewski and his by then estranged wife Janina Broniewska . Broniewska , who went to Moscow and worked for '' Nowe Widnokręgi '' , took care of Wasilewska'a daughter Ewa during Wasilewska 's lengthy involvement at the German front . When the Polish People 's Army was formed , Wasilewska and Broniewska pushed for the use as an emblem on soldier uniforms and elsewhere of a crownless Piast eagle taken from the restored sarcophagus of Bolesław III Wrymouth , a medieval ruler of Poland . The crownless eagle , contrary to the previously and historically used eagle with a crown , was accepted for the army and remained in exclusive use as the coat of arms of Poland throughout the period of existence of the Polish People 's Republic ( 1945 – 89 )
Stalin 's deadly purges
Great Purge
Wanda Wasilewska