Medal of Victory and Freedom 1945
Polish military decoration
Medal of Victory and Freedom 1945 (Polish: Medal Zwycięstwa i Wolności 1945) was a Polish military decoration awarded to persons who fought during World War II against Nazi Germany.
Overview
The medal was introduced by a decree of the Council of Ministers and approved by the State National Council (Krajowa Rada Narodowa) on October 26, 1945. According to the decree, it was instituted to commemorate the victory of the Polish Nation and its allies over the barbarism of hitlerism, a triumph of the idea of democratic freedom, and to award persons who helped in this victory and triumph by their actions or suffering, in this country or abroad, by May 9, 1945.
Recipients
It was awarded to:
soldiers of the Polish People's Army (Ludowe Wojsko Polskie) in the USSR
soldiers fighting in the invasion of Poland in 1939
soldiers of the Polish Armed Forces in the West, provided that they come back to Poland after the war
Poles who fought against Germans in allied armies
Polish partisans fighting in the country or abroad
members of the Soviet, Yugoslav or French partisan units.
armed forces members who served at least three months by May 9, 1945, in auxiliary units, helping in the victory.
Currency
The medal was awarded by the Prime Minister, and from 1958 by the Council of State. It ceased to be awarded in 1992. About 670,000 Medals were awarded by 1985.
It was first awarded on May 9, 1946, given among others to Bolesław Bierut.
Description
The Medal was 33 mm in diameter.
“Medal of Victory and Freedom 1945” enters the record as polish military decoration. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Medal, Victory and Freedom can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4287129. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1945, 1939, 1958 and 1992.
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This entry incorporates text from “Medal of Victory and Freedom 1945” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.