He kept the faith

When we were growing up in England, the Polish Government-in-Exile struck us teenagers as a bit of an oddity. We lived then in a bi-polar world in which a free-market, democratic Atlanticist bloc glared across the Iron Curtain in a nuclear standoff with an equally-powerful Soviet bloc, a dictatorship of captive nations, one of which was Poland. Thus it was when we were born, thus, many thought, would it ever be. Yet at 43 Eaton Place, London, the spirit and legal legitimacy of pre-war Poland endured, though diplomatically shunned by the governments of the west since the summer of 1945. And for the next 45 years, the Polish Government-in-Exile would soldier on, maintaining the continuity of the Polish state. For us, children born to Poles exiled in the UK after the war, that continuity was an integral and defining part of our lives, especially at weekends.

We spent our Saturday mornings at Polish school learning Polish grammar, history and geography; Saturday afternoon we spent at Polish scouts, learning military drill, fieldcraft, national traditions and patriotic songs; on Sundays we went to mass in the Polish church. Poland might have been under the yoke of the Soviet Union, but in our heart we were keeping alive the true spirit of Poland. Ojczyznę wolną/Racz nam wrócić Panie ('Let us return, O Lord, to a free fatherland") we'd sing at the end of mass, every Sunday.

If there was a tipping point when things started to be different, it was 1980. The Solidarity movement suddenly gave us hope that Poland could pull itself free of the Soviet orbit and become a independent country once more. Then came Martial Law; a cold dark hand fell over the Polish nation. In the mid-1980s, it looked once again like the east-west split was indeed a permanent feature of the world in which we lived. But the Government-in-Exile kept the faith.

I personally had a lot of time for Kazimierz Sabbat, the penultimate President-in-Exile, who actively encouraged support for the Polish opposition. This was a time of political meetings with activists from Poland, immersion in Polish history and long, long discussions into the night about how Poland could look as an independent state. Tragically, President Sabbat died months before Poland regained its freedom. He was succeeded by Ryszard Kaczorowski, prominent in the Polish scouting movement in the UK. And so it fell to President Kaczorowski to fly to Warsaw, and on 22 December 1990, to hand over to Lech Wałęsa, who'd just been democratically elected President of the new Third Republic, the insignia of state that had left Poland with President Ignacy Mościcki on 17 September 1939.

Since then, Ryszard Kaczorowski had remained a powerful symbol of the survival and continuity of the Polish nation and the Polish state. It is somehow tragically fitting that he should be among the victims of last Saturday's crash at Smolensk. His presence on the aircraft is highly symbolic, lifting into the great history book of the Polish people the role of the Government-in-Exile, and its role when many had all but given up hope. His fate could have been similar to the 22,000 Poles murdered at Katyń. He too was arrested by the NKVD and sentenced to death. He was fortunate, however, to have had it commuted to a ten-year stretch in the GULAG. He made his way out of the Soviet Union with Anders' army after the Nazi attack on the USSR, like so many other Poles, including my mother.

Ryszard Kaczorowski was a personal friend of my parents-in-law. My wife was at yesterday's requiem mass for President Kaczorowski at the Church of the Holy Cross (her photo above).

Looking at the photo: Isn't it a damned shame that the ceremonial weapon used in such occasions is still the AK-47 Kalashnikov? Wouldn't a Lee-Enfield rifle be more appropriate? The weapon used by Polish soldiers at Monte Cassino, where Ryszard Kaczorowski also fought?