Irena Anders buried at Monte Cassino

An urn with the ashes of Irena Anders, the wife of Poland’s war-time hero General Władysław Anders, was buried in her husband’s grave at the Polish Military Cemetery at Monte Cassino, Saturday.

The ceremony came three days after the 67th anniversary of the historic capture of Monte Cassino by the allied troops, in which Polish soldiers under General Anders’ command played a decisive role. Irena Anders died in London on 29 November, 2010, aged 90.

Poland’s First Lady, Anna Komorowska, attended the ceremony, who was also present at Irena Anders’ funeral in London last December, as well as delegations of Polish war veterans from Warsaw and London.

This was the fourth burial at the Polish Cemetery at Monte Cassino after the war, following those of General Anders in May 1970, of General Bolesław Duch and of Field Bishop General Józef Gawlina.

Irena Anders was a singer and actress. Early in her career, after the city of Lviv fell to the Soviets in September 1939, she joined a Polish musical revue company, tolerated by the Soviet occupiers.

When General Anders was given the task of forming an army from the survivors of the one and a half million Poles who had been captured in 1939 or later deported into the Soviet Union, Irena Anders and her company enlisted in the army, proving a great morale booster to Polish soldiers, along their route from Persia via Iraq and Palestine to Egypt.

After the Battle of Monte Cassino, in which Poles suffered huge losses, Irena Anders sung the poignant Czerwone maki na Monte Cassino (Red Poppies on Monte Cassino) in front of the monastery ruins.

She and General Anders were married in 1948.

Having settled in London, she continued to act and sing for the Polish émigré community there. She was a frequent visitor to Poland after the collapse of communism. She received the Order of Polonia Restituta in 1997. (mk/pg)