The Gestapo's arrest of Osa–Kosa 30 members at a Warsaw wedding in 1943 was one of the severest blows to the Polish Underground State.
Key Facts
- Date of mass arrest
- 5 June 1943
- Location of arrest
- St. Alexander's Church, Warsaw
- Occasion exploited by Gestapo
- Wedding of a unit comrade
- Second arrest date
- 12 July 1943
- Second person arrested
- Lt. Mieczysław Kudelski (codenamed Wiktor)
- Outcome for arrested soldiers
- Killed or disappeared without a trace
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
An unidentified informant enabled the Gestapo to penetrate Osa–Kosa 30, a Polish special operations unit. The intelligence allowed German security forces to pinpoint a gathering of dozens of the unit's soldiers attending a comrade's wedding at St. Alexander's Church in Warsaw on 5 June 1943.
Gestapo agents arrested dozens of Osa–Kosa 30 soldiers at the wedding on 5 June 1943. On 12 July 1943, Lieutenant Mieczysław Kudelski, the unit's chief of staff who had attempted to rebuild it, was also arrested. The arrested soldiers were subsequently killed or disappeared without a trace.
The successive arrests made it impossible to reconstitute Osa–Kosa 30, compelling Home Army command to formally dissolve the unit. The episode was considered one of the most damaging strikes the German security apparatus delivered against the Polish Underground State, and the identity of the informant has never been established.