Read Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw Online
Authors: Norman Davies
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #War, #History
BRITAIN
A survivor of the Rising, who had joined the 2nd Corps in Italy, takes his first steps in another foreign country
We are crossing the English Channel. We can see the white cliffs of Dover, vertically dropping into the sea. Soon we will land . . . It is 11 August 1946. Two years have passed since we began the Rising . . . We did not see much of London, only in transit from St Pancras to Paddington, and west to Beaconsfield. From there we travelled straight through the forests to Hodgemore Camp, where the Carpathian Division command was to be stationed. . . .
Penn Wood Camp
We protect the camp from an invasion of English squatters. There is a housing crisis and the English look upon us with disdain. They have already forgotten the role the Poles played in the Battle of Britain and our war effort on their side. They do not understand why we do not return to ‘free’ Poland. There is also a lot of unemployment and Poles are fierce competition as cheap labour and extremely hard workers.
South Wood
I turn twenty-six today. I do not feel weighted down by it, but all the same, it is a significant chunk of time and what have I achieved up to now? . . . Lt. B. arrived and relieved me of command . . . Under his strong hand, the camp took on a different appearance . . . and he spoke so understandingly to the soldiers, raising their spirits and explaining the current difficulties, whereas I . . . complained along with them.
I received my first letter today, from my friends and family, after nineteen months . . . They had returned to Warsaw. I felt deep joy and gratitude towards God for protecting them, but it renewed my longing for them. I left their lives two years ago and life had carried on without me . . .
Sudbury
And yet another move, to a camp near Sudbury in Suffolk. I came here as an English teacher. My English is weak, but I was ordered to do it . . . I found out that the corps was to be disbanded. A mass of soldiers, non-commissioned officers, and even officers were signing up to go home. It was no great surprise. There was little likelihood of war, their families were waiting. Anyone who did not bear too heavy a debt to Poland’s new authorities could risk it.
It was the first time I had been in a local Catholic church in England. The atmosphere was much more rigid than in Poland or Italy. Awful Latin with an English accent and pronunciation, and they passed the plate around three times. The soldiers got their coppers ready, but by the second and third collections they had got rid of them, so they had to put more valuable coinage in. The priest beamed with admiration at Polish generosity . . . (the following Sunday he probably changed his mind: there were not as many pieces of silver on the plate). Some soldiers were late and by accident ended up at the Anglican church . . . As a result an Anglican minister arrived at the camp wanting to make contact with the
Polish Protestants
. He was reluctant to believe me when I told him there were none.
Witley Camp
In my letters from Poland there was not even the slightest suggestion of my possible return. It was then that I truly realized the real danger for my relatives. For a while correspondence was not even sent in my name, but I became ‘Auntie Klimcia’. It was funny to read letters from my mum or sister addressed to ‘Darling Auntie’.
Sitting in a meadow chatting to Jules P., I happened to catch sight of English workers laying a telephone cable from post to post with long, frequent tea breaks. What they managed to do in a week, I could have done in two days, even with such tea breaks . . .
And then there was an officers’ party. There were practically no Polish girls, just English girls. One, extremely fat, was the ‘sweetheart’ of one of our officers. When we teased him about his taste, he replied, ‘Look on and be jealous, so much there and all of it mine.’ I had already danced with a few two-metre-tall dry English girls, but still there was no Ela . . .
I arrived in London on 15 January 1947. I moved to a new flat with Lt. Z., a communications officer, who had been in Murnau. His whole family had been lost in the bombing of Lodz. He had no one to return to. I found an inexpensive room for two people near the hospice (it turned out to be extremely cold). We were fed at the hospice. Horse and whale meat featured frequently on the menu, because they were the cheapest and could be obtained without ration cards. On Sunday, we had lunch at ‘Lyons’, lacking in taste, but nourishing.
1
One should not imagine, therefore, that such people set off for these distant continents without very mixed feelings. They could not know in advance what really awaited them, and in most cases they had no desire to separate themselves forever from their home country and their native culture. Yet they were driven by necessity – by the need for work, the need to provide for growing families, the need for stability. These basics were not in ready supply for uprooted people in war-damaged Europe.
Beyond and above economic necessity, however, another factor was at work, perhaps the decisive one. It reflected the political captivity of their home country. In any other political circumstances, almost all exiled Varsovians would have returned home en masse; and they would have flung themselves into the task of reconstruction, no matter how harsh the deprivations might have been. But they were not going to devote their energies for the benefit of foreign masters, whose ideology and practices they deplored. So, despite the risks and the anxieties, they stayed abroad; and they bore all the adversities with fortitude, because they had chosen to do so of their own free will. Many years later, when asked about their life decision, they would generally answer with disarming frankness and absolute clarity: ‘Our country was not free.’ ‘There was no place for us there.’ ‘Members of othe Home Army were persecuted, imprisoned, sent to Siberia, or brutally murdered.’ ‘We sincerely hoped . . . that we would again be called to fight for free Poland.’
32
Of course, for many émigrés of the older generation the decision about changing continents never arose. As often as not, they could neither go home nor think of moving on. So they stayed where they were – usually in London or Glasgow or in one of the other centres of Polish concentration. If they were officers, they were automatically in a cast of undesirables in ‘People’s’ Poland’. If they were big names, like Boor or Anders, they were probably on a list of ‘traitors’, sentenced in absentia. If they were middle-aged they had limited capacity to study or to ‘nostrify’ their qualifications, or to earn anything other than a pittance in the most menial of jobs. Apart from anything else, the Varsovians amongst them were victims of an especially mean decision of the British Ministry of
Pensions, which paid a modest emolument to ex-servicemen who had fought under British command in the West, but which absolutely refused to pay a penny to ex-members of the Home Army. Both the British and Americans had gone to considerable lengths to publicize the fact that the Home Army’s ranks were Allied soldiers entitled to combatant status. The Third Reich was reluctantly obliged to observe the fact. But the two bodies which consistently refused to observe it were the NKVD and the British Ministry of Pensions.
USA
Mary R., a widow from Rocky River (Ohio), recalls her late husband’s path to a scientific career
Voychek R. was born in Warsaw in 1921, the son of a professor at the Higher College of Agriculture, and his wife Maria. In 1939 he completed studies at the Adam Mitskevich School in Warsaw and went on to gain some community work experience. When the Rising broke out he joined a conspiratorial unit, nr. 1147, also known as ‘Girder’s Company’. The Rising was an important experience for him because despite the trail of victims it left among his comrades and civilians, it symbolized his own and his generation’s wish to fight the enemy openly. They had called his unit ‘Girder’s’ to commemorate its commander, who lost his life in the City Centre on the second day of the fighting. The unit was not allocated to the front line, its role was to support Major Vola, a divisional chief based in the north of the City Centre. When two subsequent commanders were wounded Voychek, who was also injured but not seriously, took over in September. Eventually he became a prisoner of war, together with the 28th Division of the AK, in Bergen-Belsen, Gross Born, and Sandbostel. Later on he was demobilized in Calais and sent to Belgium to study. In 1947 he graduated from the University of Louvain. After he had received his PhD he emigrated to the United States.
From 1961, he worked for many years as a scientist for NASA. He gained international acclaim for his extensive and valuable theses and numerous discoveries. He wrote a book,
Imperceptible Worlds
. Among his formal achievements were dissertations on liquid hydrogen axial-flow pumps and the explanation of certain functions in axial-flow compressors and the stability of rocket engines. Apart from analytical research and writing, he also did contract work for Aerojet and Rockedyne in California and other established companies. In 1971 he received a doctorate in applied mathematics from his alma mater in Louvain.
He was the first to develop a complete mathematical model, scientifically tested, for the course of sound waves in a bent conduit. In six further papers he explained the basic manifestations of the movements of sound waves in mildly and severely bent conduits having smooth and sound-dampening walls. He was frequently quoted in the Scientific Citation Index and NASA recognized his scientific discoveries that among others included the formulation of a new, undefined integral – to be found today in all the mathematical tables – by presenting him with numerous awards.
For many years Voychek was an active member of the Regional Group of the AK. For twelve years he was the Chairman of the Collective Regional Group of the AK in the United States, which represented the AK combatants dispersed in America.
1
As a result, several of the most distinguished émigrés were reduced to a life of near penury. They survived through the charity of their less pinched compatriots, through the solidarity of their community, through the ministration of the Polish Catholic Mission, in some cases through the help of British friends and sympathizers. But most often they survived through their own resourcefulness and ingenuity. There were generals who worked as waiters. There were judges and professors who toiled in the dirtiest departments of the Cherry Blossom Boot Polish factory or the National Coal Board. Not to put too fine a point on it, there were war heroes who had to knuckle down and work the night shift in the least promising branches of trade and industry. Most of them did so without complaints, though, no doubt, behind the scenes, they produced more than their share of buskers, con-men and the mentally ill – the last group faithfully tended in the Polish Wing of the Mabledon Hospital by the late Marshal’s daughter, Dr Vanda P. Their flagship company was the ‘Silver Brigade’, a group of high-ranking Polish officers who cleaned the silverware at the Ritz Hotel in London’s Piccadilly. Gen. Boor, who was fifty years old when he reached England, lived out his last two decades quietly with his family in a drab London suburb largely supported by his wife’s curtain-making.
Many of the leaders of the Warsaw Rising were to be found in the Polish circles of post-war London. Gen. Anders long presided. Apart from Boor, Gregory, and Heller, many others could be regularly observed at the tables of the Polish Hearth on Exhibition Road, or in the various clubs of the Ex-Combatants’ Association. But two groups of names which had been prominent in 1944 were missing: those who, in spite of everything, had returned to Warsaw, and those who evidently felt ill at ease among their former comrades and had departed elsewhere. Premier Mick, when he escaped from Poland in 1947, took up residence in the USA, not in Britain. The former Commanderin-Chief lived in Montreal. Gen. Monter chose Washington, DC. [
CAVIAHUE
, p. 557]
One specific milieu in London was heavily coloured by its links with the Warsaw Rising. The Polish Section of the BBC had performed doughtily during the war; and afterwards it acted as a natural magnet for all those who had gained a passion for broadcasting in the Underground. Novak, Yan. K-P, Thaddeus Kania, and Zbig B. were all ex-insurgents and all were BBC employees in the immediate post-war years.
In 1951, when the US Congress decided to provide funding for a radio station directed to the countries of the Soviet bloc, the Polish Section of the BBC inevitably supplied much of the talent for the Polish Section for Radio Free Europe in Munich. Novak was appointed director, and began a career which no amount of Soviet jamming could hold back, and which gave him in all probability the best-known and the best-loved voice in Poland.
Novak’s career had many highlights. But none surpassed the day in 1954 when his office in Munich was enlivened by the most exciting of post-war defectors. The newcomer, who had fled from the East via the U-Bahn in Berlin, had more inside knowledge about the workings of the Communist system in general and of ‘People’s Poland’ in particular than almost anyone else at liberty. Until then, he had been director in Warsaw of the X Department of the Security Bureau, the man charged with keeping the secret police files on the top Communist leadership. The torrent of facts which he was due to reveal in a long series of interviews struck a deadly blow at the regime, not least in the eyes of its loyal, but unthinking, supporters. His name was Joseph Light. He was the dubious policeman who in September 1944 had run the Security Office in Praga. For the ex-insurgents and their ex-enemies, the world was coming full circle.
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In Western countries, the Nuremberg trials are generally considered to have brought a fitting end to the Second World War. Although Hitler and Himmler had both escaped justice through suicide, a substantial group of leading Nazis were put into the dock, were tried under the rule of law, were found guilty of horrific crimes after the presentation of damning evidence, and were deservedly punished. Twelve were sentenced to death by hanging: seven served terms of imprisonment varying from ten years to life; and three walked free.