{"id":3298,"date":"2024-07-01T13:07:05","date_gmt":"2024-07-01T13:07:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.168.3.10\/dytiatyn\/wordpress\/?p=3298"},"modified":"2026-09-15T14:59:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T14:59:08","slug":"odznaczenie-virtus-et-fraternitas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testdytiatyn.fundacjabratslonce.pl\/en\/odznaczenie-virtus-et-fraternitas\/","title":{"rendered":"Virtus et Fraternitas Decoration"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last defender of the cemetery in Dytiatyn awarded the Virtus et Fraternitas Medal<\/p>\n

On June 2, 2021, at the Presidential Palace in Warsaw, President Andrzej Duda presented the Virtus et Fraternitas Medals to nine people \u2013 most of them posthumously, to their families. Only one of the decorated was able to receive the medal in person. It was Petro Hrudzewycz, a Ukrainian from Dytiatyn, who made a special contribution to preserving the memory of the battle of September 16, 1920.<\/strong><\/p>\n

After the Soviets destroyed the Polish War Cemetery in Dytiatyn after World War II, only an iron cross remained at the battle site \u2013 according to legend, made from shell casings fired during the battle. The matter was not revisited until 1986. The criminal prisoners who had knocked over the cross were brought to the site. The question remained what to do with it now. A group of local party officials paid a visit to Petro Hrudzevych, who worked as a driver on a collective farm, transporting people to work in a truck. They told him to take his car and \u201cclean up\u201d the cross: \u201cWe have to take the cross and take it away. Either to the forest or to the river.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Petro refused. "I won't take the Polish cross anywhere. Not to the river, not to the forest." He was punished with a severe disciplinary penalty for this. From then on, he also had to deliver milk jugs weighing several dozen liters, which he was ordered to throw with his own hands onto the high bed of a truck. Once, he suffered a severe spinal injury while doing so. "He came home in such a state that we had to pull him out of the truck. Something snapped in his spine. Then he lay at home for three days, and my sister and I turned him over on a mattress, because he couldn't get up on his own. From that moment on, his health deteriorated more and more. It only got worse and worse...". Since then, he has been moving on crutches.<\/p>\n

The cross was eventually thrown by prisoners over the fence of the church in Dytiatyn, where it remains buried to this day, while a new cross was erected at the Polish War Cemetery, rebuilt in 2015.<\/p>\n

The author of this text met Mr. Petro Hrudzewycz by accident, during the celebration of the 98th anniversary of the battle on September 18, 2018, which our hero attended despite his disability. His story is widely known in the local community, which is why almost every interviewee referred the reporter to him. After returning to Poland, together with Father Bronis\u0142aw Staworowski, then President of the Board of the Brother Sun Foundation, a decision was made to start the procedure of nominating Mr. Petro Hrudzewycz for the decoration.<\/p>\n

Just a year earlier, in 2017, a new medal, Virtus et Fraternitas, was added to the Polish system of state decorations, established specifically for foreigners who saved Poles from Nazi, communist or nationalist crimes, or took care of Polish memorial sites outside the borders of contemporary Poland. In July 2019, the author of this article, together with Father Bronis\u0142aw, went to Dytiatyn, where they recorded the accounts of Mr. Petro Hrudzewycz, his family and neighbors.<\/p>\n

This source material was submitted to the Pilecki Institute \u2013 the host of the Virtus et Fraternitas Medal \u2013 where it passed the initial verification, after which the Institute\u2019s staff began their own research. After its completion, the application for the award was submitted to the President of the Republic of Poland. If not for the COVID-19 pandemic, the award ceremony would have taken place in 2020. However, due to force majeure, it was postponed for over a year. Mr. Petro Hrudzewycz was accompanied to the award ceremony by his daughter, Vira Sano\u0107ka, and representatives of the Brother Sun Foundation. His award was written about by the largest Polish and many Ukrainian media, and Petro Hrudzewycz\u2019s story finally went beyond the local circle and became known to a wider circle of society in Poland and Ukraine.<\/p>\n

"I was not afraid. I go to church, I am a believer. (...) I was guided not only by the Christian values according to which I was raised, but also by the memory of the fallen sons, husbands and heroes who gave their lives on this land. Although my family and I experienced great persecution, I do not think I did anything special, because in my place everyone would have done the same out of memory and respect for the sacrifice of Polish soldiers" - said the last hero of Dytiatyn on the day he was decorated in the heart of the Polish capital.<\/p>\n

Marcin Wi\u0119ckowski<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>
\"\"<\/a><\/div>
\"\"<\/a><\/div>
\"\"<\/a><\/div>
\"\"<\/a><\/div>
\"\"<\/a><\/div>
\"\"<\/a><\/div>
\"\"<\/a><\/div>
\"\"<\/a><\/div>
\"\"<\/a><\/div>
\"\"<\/a><\/div>
\"\"<\/a><\/div>
\"\"<\/a><\/div>
\"\"<\/a><\/div>
\"\"<\/a><\/div>
\"\"<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/section>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last defender of the Dytiatyn cemetery honored with the Virtus et Fraternitas medal. Petro Hrudzewycz, a Ukrainian from Dytiatyn, personally received the Virtus et Fraternitas medal from President Andrzej Duda. He was awarded this distinction for his exceptional contribution to preserving the memory of the Battle of September 16, 1920.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"template_post.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[27,42,50,100,34,111,114,109,38,112,113,110],"class_list":["post-3298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aktualnosci","tag-bohaterowie","tag-cmentarz-wojenny","tag-dytiatyn","tag-fundacja-brat-slonce","tag-historia-polski","tag-ii-wojna-swiatowa","tag-medale-panstwowe","tag-odznaczenia","tag-pamiec-historyczna","tag-petro-hrudzewycz","tag-polsko-ukrainskie-relacje","tag-virtus-et-fraternitas"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testdytiatyn.fundacjabratslonce.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testdytiatyn.fundacjabratslonce.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testdytiatyn.fundacjabratslonce.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testdytiatyn.fundacjabratslonce.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testdytiatyn.fundacjabratslonce.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3298"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/testdytiatyn.fundacjabratslonce.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6127,"href":"https:\/\/testdytiatyn.fundacjabratslonce.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3298\/revisions\/6127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testdytiatyn.fundacjabratslonce.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testdytiatyn.fundacjabratslonce.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testdytiatyn.fundacjabratslonce.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testdytiatyn.fundacjabratslonce.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}