Marian Ratajczyk was a Polish soldier during the Second World War who fought in the Low Countries and helped liberate the Emsland camps, where Polish prisoners of war were held.
Marian Ratajczyk was born in a small village near Kutno named Stanisławice on 6 June 1917. He was a Corporal in the 1st Polish Motorised Artillery Regiment.
He served in the Polish army in exile, stationed in the United Kingdom. He participated in the 1944 advance of Polish forces that helped liberate Normandy and the Low Countries alongside other Allied troops.
Corporal Ratajczyk was part of the convoy that was heading towards the German naval base in Wilhelmshaven. They crossed the border from the Netherlands to Germany in the town of Emmen and went north via the Emsland.
The Emslandlager were a group of prisoner-of-war camps. The Polish army liberated most of them, including the camp in Oberlangen. This prisoner of war camp included Polish women belonging to the ‘Polish Home Army’ resistance movement (Armia Krajowa) who participated in the Warsaw Uprising.
Marian Ratajczyk died on 21 April 1945 near the Dutch border in Papenburg, Emsland, Germany, following the premature explosion of a shell in a cannon. Józef Zmarzły died alongside Corporal Ratajczyk.
He was initially buried at the cemetery in Wolfsbergen, Emmen, and later reinterred at the Polish Field of Honour in 1962.
Plot E, Row 5, Grave 10