I have this old photo that my grandmother used to carry with her. She never spoke openly about him. Trying to identify more information about it. Unfortunately she has long passed away.

She was born in Poland (Lemberg) and I believe this is from Second Polish Republic period.

I was looking online and the Rogatwka seems to match one of the included photos though not exactly. Can’t seem to find what the badge on the left side represents, nor a matching belt and boots. Some sort of small barricade is behind the tree but can’t make that out either.

I know it’s not much to go from, but any tips to help me find out clues in identifying this mystery man would help!

by MumblingManuscript

6 comments
  1. This guy is a Polish infantry private from a pre-WW2 period. It seems to be after 1937 (judging by his boots), but for some reason he has a jacket from before 1936 because it has two pockets instead of four. His rogatywka is definitely a wz.35 one, because it has sharp edges.

  2. Apparently there are 4 comments already but they don’t show for me so I would say the cap is definitely a rogatywka, the uniform is different than the wz 17 from partyzant since the photo one seems to have the pockets at an angle

    plus Lemberg according to Wikipedia is german name of Lviv (was a polish city during 2nd Republic)

  3. unfortunately, this will be extremely difficult to do

    for starters, your grandfather was a private and that hardly constitutes identifying information as there were a lot of them. the uniform is standard issue and there is nothing unique about it unfortunately. the barn and fence behind the tree also look basic for that time

    the badge however could be a clue. in the second republic people got badges for the company they originally enlisted in. a close-up of the badge would be great because then you could maybe look into the names of the enlisted men if this lists survived the war of course

    do you maybe know if your grandfather survived the war? that could be a start

  4. Maybe he was a combat engineer, they were issued jackboots.

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