Recipients of the Cross of Independence

Stanisław Jakub Skarżyński (1 May 1899 − 26 June 1942) was a lieutenant colonel in the Polish Air Force and aviator famous for his transatlantic solo flight in 1933.

Marian Józef Żegota-Januszajtis (3 April 1889, Częstochowa, Piotrków Governorate - 24 March 1973, Royal Tunbridge Wells) was a Polish military commander and politician. One of the founders of Polish paramilitary pro-independence organizations in Austrian partition, and last commander of the 1st Brigade of Polish Legions.
He was also the organizer of unsuccessful coup in 1919, general in the Second Polish Republic and Polish Armed Forces in the West, voivode of the Nowogródek Voivodeship (1924-1926), and member of the Polish government in Exile.
Following the Soviet invasion of Poland he founded the Organization for the Struggle for Freedom in Lwów. He was arrested by NKVD on 27 October 1939 and imprisoned in Lwów and then in Moscow Lubyanka prison. After the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement of July 1941, he was released. After the war, he remained in exile in the United Kingdom, where he died in March 1973 and was buried in Crawley cemetery next to his wife. In November 1981, his ashes were brought to Poland – resting in the New Cemetery in Zakopane, in legionnaires' quarters.

Władysław Bortnowski (12 November 1891 – 21 November 1966) was a Polish historian, military commander and one of the highest ranking generals of the Polish Army. He is most famous for commanding the Pomorze Army in the Battle of Bzura during the invasion of Poland in 1939. He is also notable for serving as president of the Józef Piłsudski Institute of America between 1961 and 1962.

Brigadier General Mieczysław Makary Smorawiński (1893–1940), was a Polish military commander and officer of the Polish Army. He was one of the Polish generals identified by forensic scientists of the Katyn Commission as the victim of the Soviet Katyn massacre of 1940.
Mieczysław Makary Smorawiński was born December 25, 1893, in Kalisz, then in Russian Empire. There he graduated from a local primary school and then a Russian language trade school. Early in his youth he joined the Zarzewie resistance organization and became one of its leaders in Kalisz. Denunciated, in 1911 he was arrested and sentenced to 6 months in prison in Ekaterinoslav (modern Dnipropetrovsk in Ukraine). After finishing his term he emigrated to Lwów (modern Lviv) in Austro-Hungarian Galicia, where in 1912 he passed his matura exam and joined the Faculty of Chemistry of the Lwów School of Technology. There he also joined the Drużyny Strzeleckie organization, in which he received basic military training.

Stefan Dąb-Biernacki (7 January 1890 – 9 February 1959) was a general of the army during the Second Polish Republic. He served as a major general in the Polish Army in overall command of strategic reserve Army "Prusy" during the 1939 German Invasion of Poland.

Maria Dąbrowska ([dɔmˈbrɔfska]; born Maria Szumska; 6 October 1889 – 19 May 1965) was a Polish writer, novelist, essayist, journalist and playwright, author of the popular Polish historical novel Noce i dnie (Nights and Days) written between 1932 and 1934 in four separate volumes. The novel was made into a film by the same title in 1975 by Jerzy Antczak. Besides her own work, she was also known for translating Samuel Pepys' Diary into Polish. In addition, Dąbrowska was awarded the prestigious Golden Laurel of the Polish Academy of Literature in 1935, and she was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature eleven times between 1939 and 1965.