My second was to call my old friend Adam Michnik in Warsaw. Michnik, an intellectual imprisoned six times by the former puppet-Soviet Communist rulers, once told me:

“Anyone who has suffered that humiliation, at some level, wants revenge. I know all the lies. I saw people being killed. But I also know that revanchism is never ending. And my obsession has been that we should have a revolution that does not resemble the French or Russian, but rather the American, in the sense that it be for something, not against something. A revolution for a constitution, not a paradise. An anti-utopian revolution. Because utopias lead to the guillotine and the gulag.”

By ROGER COHEN  Published: April 12, 2010

Continuation of the article The Glory of Poland

The alliance between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact and the Soviet attack on Poland on 17 September 1939 reached a terrifying climax in the Katyn massacre. Not only in the Katyn forest, but also in Tver, Kcharkiv and other known, and unknown, execution sites citizens of the Second Republic of Poland, people who formed the foundation of our statehood, who adamantly served the motherland, were killed.

via TheNews.pl – For a full text of the speech continue reading

The deportations were a complete shock. Nobody knew why or where they were being taken. For some, the deportations meant a quick death; for others, they meant several years, or forever, living on this „inhuman land”. In his book The Soviet Treatment of Poles in the Eastern Lands of the Second Republic, 1939-1941, Albin Głowacki writes, „The temperature dropped as far as -42 degrees Celsius. Armed functionaries of the NKVD banged on the doors of the apartments of those on the list to be deported. Once inside, they gathered the residents, torn away from their sleep, into one place, allowed them to get dressed,   confirmed   their   identities, and began a detailed search of the home, ostensibly in search of weapons but finding people in hiding (at times they were able to take the most valuable objects, documents, or photographs, etc.). The men, under armed guard, stood immobile, unable to openly oppose such chaos. The decision about resettlement, which could not be cancelled, was read. To the question where, the response was generally vague; it was usually dismissed or answered with a lie about some other region or district or perhaps the birthplace of the parents of those about to be deported.

According to the NKVD, 220,000 settlers and foresters, together with their families, were resettled during the first deportations; they were taken to twenty-one different Soviet regions and districts. The majority of them worked in the People’s Commissariat of the Forest Industry or the People’s Commisariat of Transportation, and the People’s Commissariat of the Mining of Colored Metals. Others were sent to other Commissariats, for Manufacturing, Iron and Steel Mills, Construction, Weapons, or Building Materials, or sent to the camps of the NKVD.

The dry names of commissariats mask the tragic fates of those in the camps. The deported worked in heavy snow, in old, deep mines, in the worst sanitary conditions and in the worst weather (terribly cold winters and brutally hot summers with mosquitoes), without even minimal concern for their health. They died or suffered from exhaustion, cold, and hunger. Poles were treated as people of the lowest category – deprived of all rights as „enemies of the people” and as „bourgeouis”. At each step along the way NKVD officials repeated: „There will never be another Poland.”

Today we know that Poland has not yet perished. The nation’s lasting determination and strength has been greater than Soviet cruelty. Now we can speak openly about this period, recalling with pride the heroism of our ancestors and wishing that their experiences will ignite the spark of patriotism in the hearts of younger generations of Poles.

A Kresy-Siberia discussion group was started online in 2001, attracting more than 850 members from around the world, mainly members of Polonia in the West, whose families had roots in the former kresy of the Second Republic. As a result of the events of the Second World War, and, not least, Soviet repression, the families of many in Polonia met the tragic fate of deportation and exile and had to fight for survival in foreign lands. For more information, see:

http://www.kresy-siberia.org

Red. Translated by Sean Martin

Forum, 2/2010

My parents’ home was located near the Biebrza River – a  large house surrounded by verandas, with two glistening ponds behind it. On the other side of the street, amongst the tall poplars, were the utility buildings of our property .  Our family lived on the first floor of the house.   At the time, the upstairs provided  three quarters for the occupying German  military police. One of  the residents was an officer  about 40 years old who had a room to himself.  Not far from our house was the market square surrounded by a church originally founded by Countess Potocka, the town firehouse, a childbirthing center and various shops. Most of the buildings, including the parish community center were forcibly occupied by the Germans during the war.

My oldest sister finished high school in 1938 and was quite proficient in German which she had learned at school.  Her best friend happened to be Jewish.   I remember her well for she was often a visitor in our home.  This girlfriend had a five year old sister. We all sensed the fate awaiting the Jews and we knew what would happen to any Pole found helping a Jew.  There was just one punishment for anyone harboring or helping Jews – death for his or her entire family..
At the request of my sister, my father made a decision to go out that day, Christmas Eve,  to fetch  her girlfriend’s five year old sister. He took warm clothes for her and with his two horses harnessed to the sled, he started out after having obtained the appropriate  pass from  “our” German officer with which he was able travel about in the area. Earlier, my father had obtained a “birth certificate and “appropriate documents” from the local pastor  for “Zosia” – that was the name as written in the papers  when she arrived at our house during the day of  Christmas Eve or Wigilia.

My sister told the German officer that the little girl was our cousin and that her parents had died. He replied that it would be best for the young girl not to leave the house. I wondered what he could have meant by this; why did he say that? What was he thinking?  Did he know who this girl was?  Zosia spoke Polish well and she knew my sister and thus quickly became used to her new surroundings.  She particularly enjoyed my company and we talked and played together often.
And thus little Zosia took the empty place set at the Wigilia dinner table covered in straw and white linens, that special  place reserved for a traveler in need during the night of Christmas Eve. The German officer quartered in our house would often take the little girl on his knee.  He kept photographs of his family in his pockets and would look longingly at the pictures of his wife, dressed in white with their two daughters, somewhere around Zosia’s age standing next to her.  Even today, the questions still haunt me.  Did he know about Zosia?  Did he survive the war and was he able to go back to his family?=

After the war, my sister began teaching at an elementary school and Zosia and I were among her pupils.  Later my sister moved to the city where she had gone to high school and found  Zosia’s  surviving family ( not her immediate family).  Zosia went back to live with them, but kept our family name.   Twenty years later Zosia contacted us from her new home in Canada.  But my sister never learned the fate of her dear girlfriend, Zosia’s older sister. And I, upon becoming a young man, truly began to understand and appreciate  what my father had done that night and the risk he had taken.  It defied logic and the instinct of self preservation and can only be understood  and appreciated emotionally in the deepest reaches  of the heart.  Now every year upon Christmas Eve, as  I gaze upon that empty chair at our Wigilia table, my imagination takes me back – I  see Zosia sitting on my father’s lap.

Jerzy Waluszko
Translated by Zofia Wisniewski

Forum, 1/2010

In the interview Professor Maciuszko began his story on a positive note by painting for us a charming picture of his pre-war childhood in Warsaw. His mother, a woman full of warmth and loving care, has been a towering figure in his life.  As a piano teacher, she was the one who instilled in him everlasting love for classical music.  Professor Maciuszko made these happy memories even more striking by immediately contrasting them with the calamity of the outbreak of the most horrible war ever.   He recalled a battlefield in Pomorze as hell on earth, where most of his companions died instantly. Although he survived, he was taken as prisoner-of-war and spent five and a half terrible years in German POW camps. Occasionally he was allowed to write to his mother to let her know that he was still alive.  The end of the war did not bring liberation to Poland or happiness to the Polish prisoners of war.  After a dramatic escape from the „liberating” clutches of the Soviet army, Maciuszko joined the American Army and several years later moved to the United States.

David Barnett prepared this interview with great care.  The conversation is illustrated with Polish voices in the background and intertwined with well thought-out music.

Professor Maciuszko’s voice is strong and clear, his statements are precise and well articulated, his story is arresting and compelling.  In the conversation, Prof. Maciuszko also reveals that his autobiography will be published in the near future.  This book, together with the audio recording of the author’s moving discussion with David Barnett, will represent yet another authentic voice and excellent source of knowledge about the Polish experience in World War II and the history of Polonia in America.

In the same program immediately after the interview with Prof. Maciuszko author Alex Storozynski discussed his latest book, Peasant Prince and the Age of Revolution, that fills a gap in the popular knowledge about General Kosciuszko, the American Revolution, and its relation to the worldwide struggle for freedom.   In his presentation Storozynski also addressed the recent decision of the defense missile shield in Poland.  Although this decision was expected, it was carried out with a lack of sensitivity towards Poland since it was announced on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland.  This type of diplomatic gaffe underscores the widespread lack of historical knowledge about the role the Soviet Union played in the outbreak of World War II and its aggressive policies towards Poland and other eastern European countries.

Both interviews can be found in the audio archives of the program Around Noon under the date September 28,  2009.  It is unfortunate that the entire program Around Noon that day was entitled “Guy Wolff, Jeffrey Siegel and WWII 70th anniversary,”  and was illustrated with a picture of the American potter Guy  Wolff, thereby deemphasizing the importance of the 70th anniversary of WWII.   However, Professor Maciuszko’s interview, together with his picture and extensive biographical article, was posted on a separate webpage under the heading “Witness to History” on the following website: http://www.wcpn.org/WCPN/news/28051/

Maria Szonert

Forum, 10/2009

The first of the wounded was a man, about fifty years old. Carried away with the fighting, he had grabbed a rifle and jumped on the barricade. Both of his hands were shot. This was the first blood and my first moment of horror. We made bandages from sheets, as first aid to stop the excessive bleeding.

We spent the first evening and night in the basement. It was big enough, having served earlier as a locksmith’s workshop. There was enough space for a few dozen of us, residents from one part of the apartment building. I didn’t know we would be spending all of the next days and nights underground. Actually, only the days; there were all kinds of contacts at night. Under the cover of darkness we retrieved water, some food, and also some news about the progress of the uprising. During the day the courtyard and street were under fire from the tall PASTA building (the telephone exchange building on Zielna Street), where the Germans were stationed for a short time. The resistance fighters took this building from the lower floors, chasing the occupiers to the upper floors. We heard the cries of the cornered Germans, calling for help. This lasted for several days, until they gave in.

It’s hard for me to say on which day of the Uprising the great tragedy occurred. A group of sixteen Home Army soldiers tried to reach the Saski Garden, to attack the Germans by surprise. The attack on the barricade did not succeed. They were all killed by grenades, at a distance of several meters from the barricade.

The conditions to reach it were not favorable. At night floodlights lit this area and one could be seen clearly here during the day. After more than ten days, their bodies were pulled out from the tunnel under the barricade with long hooks. Actually, only shreds of clothing on massacred corpses. The bodies were   arranged by the gate to the house. I don’t know if these boys were identified. Sixteen graves with hastily made crosses sprang up quickly in the flowerbed of the courtyard.

Not long after came the shocking news that Ukrainians were plundering homes and committing murder, without using guns, but using bayonets or swords. Our apartment building, the first on the street,  was especially exposed to attacks.
All of the residents moved underground to other homes in the area of Złota, Sienna, and Śliska Streets. The basements provided routes of communication. Openings in the walls of neighboring buildings were created, making it possible for people to go great distances without going outside.

The fighting continued. The German artillery attacks and bombing created an incessant threat to life and great fear. I didn’t leave my mother. I constantly held her hand, curled up into her body. I didn’t want to die, and I feared for her, too. I saw the crumbling homes as the greatest danger and death under the rubble as the greatest threat. I chose a place in the basement where the wall was thickest and close to a window or other entry.

Thirty, then forty, days passed. My sister and I tried to hear the sounds of the approaching Soviet front. We pressed our ears to the ground, listening in this way for the approaching Soviet offensive. Our ears disappointed us; the Soviets stayed in place. They had no intention of aiding a fighting Warsaw.

Heavy artillery, which we called „Berta”, ruined homes and caused tremendous havoc. They flew through the air with a characteristic echo. Many didn’t explode. We began to wish that they would not reach their goal and explode and started counting the number of these „Bertas”.

Just before the abandonment of Warsaw (the Śródmieście district, or city center, was evacuated from October 2-10), already after the suspension of arms, we returned for several hours to Grzybowa. We gathered a few necessities and clothing. There was not much time for this. My parents carried their belongings to the basement and secured them in the wall. Perhaps something remains? I hid my dolls in my pillow. Somebody told me that shells and shrapnel lose their strength when they fall on feathers. I was protecting them from being destroyed, those poor wartime companions of mine, Emilia and Joanna.

The evacuation of the city took place along the streets of the Śródmieście and Wola districts. The mournful procession took place in the middle of the street; the homes on both sides were in flames. The high temperature from the flames was oppressive.

The first break and stop of several hours was the church of Saint Wojciech on Wolska Street. The Germans were always present. They were directing us to the Warsaw Zachodnia train station. The fear of separation at the moment when people would be sorted out led to an idea: My mother took care of my sister, and my father held my hand. My leg was bandaged from the foot to the knee, which suggested that I was wounded.

We went through all the selections together; this was especially necessary in the camp in Pruszków – Dulag 121 (women and men from sixteen to sixty were meant to be sent to the Reich to work). All of resettled Warsaw, about 650,000 people, went through the Pruszków camp. The conditions in the Dulag camp were unusually difficult. A factory for heavy mechanical equipment had been changed temporarily into one giant hall, cold and damp with concrete floors. Once a day soup and a piece of bread were distributed by the Central Welfare Council (Rada Główna Opiekuńcza). The great concentration of exhausted and malnourished individuals raised the real fear of the outbreak of an epidemic.

We were called for the transport, going off into the unknown. We were loaded into cargo wagons without roofs. In the late October cold the crowded train went from station to station for several days. Someone jumped from the train, and the German transport escort shot him.

The wagons were finally opened at the Włoszczów station. The cry „Raus!” told us that we had to get out. We were free, left to our own fates. We went along the road, and a wagon driver passed us and stopped for us. The driver took us to Nieznanowice. Here there was a group of 100 people from Warsaw, crowded into just a few rooms. On bunk beds made from planks with straw for our beds we spent the next seven months.

In Nieznanowice we waited for liberation by the Red Army. There was no fight. The Germans left in the evening, the Russians came in the next day.

We returned to Warsaw at the end of May 1945. Our home was destroyed and our basement pillaged. We began our lives from zero. My childhood was over. I no longer had my dolls. I left behind my faithful Emilia and Joasia, who perished in the Warsaw Uprising in the home at 5 Grzybowska Street.

Elzbieta Uczynska, now Ulanowska
Translated by Sean Martin

Forum, 7-8/2009

Many of us remember another, better known event in this history, when, again, Polish mathematicians played the main role. This is the Enigma Secret. And here’s how it all started. In 1927, or at the beginning of 1928, an innocent package has arrived from the German Reich at a customs office in Warsaw. According to the customs declaration, the package was supposed to be radio equipment. A representative of a German company demanded the return of the package prior to the customs inspection. This awakened a suspicion among the Polish customs officers who instantly contacted the Cipher Bureau of the II Department of the Main Headquarters. This institution was interested in new developments in the area of radio equipment. Since it was Saturday, the officers of the Cipher Office had enough time to examine the package in detail. The package contained a machine, which was subsequently dismantled and reassembled. Yes, it was a trade version of the Enigma ciphering machine patented by Arthur Scherbius. Its military analogue did not exist at that time. What is interesting is that this machine (a trade version) was available on the market.

The first ciphered dispatches were sent into the air space by military broadcasting stations on July 28, 1928. The efforts to decode these dispatches were fruitless. Major F. Pokorny, the head of the Cipher Bureau did not give up and in 1928-29, in Poznan, he organized cryptology lectures for students who spoke fluent German and had graduated in mathematics. Among these students were Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki, and Henryk Zygalski. After the completion of this course, a division of the Cipher Bureau in Poznan was organized. Starting September 1, 1932, the division was moved to the building of the Main Military Headquarters near Saski Square in Warsaw (since destroyed).

On cylinders, sheets and…beautiful women

As Mr. M. Rejewski recalls, “the military version of the Enigma had the shape of a portable typewriter. It had 26 keys marked with the letters of the Latin alphabet. Instead of individual characters it had a small board with 26 bulbs marked the same way as the keys. It was supplied by a normal battery. Enigma’s most important parts were ciphering cylinders mounted on one axis. A non-moving inverting cylinder was also installed. Each of the cylinders was equipped with a ring with 26 alphabet letters. From a distance it looked like a switch-over mechanism in a racing bicycle. When one was pattering the letters of the text, then the letters of consecutively lit bulbs were creating the coded text, or a cipher. Not going into the details of the construction of Enigma let us remark, that one could create 26! =403291461126605635564000000 different connections .The “Enigma” Secret between ciphering cylinders, adding to this also 7905853580025 possibilities of various invertible cylinders In this way the factory producing the Enigma could deliver to each recipient a machine with unique, non-repeating connections of the cylinders.

In this way the factory producing the Enigma could deliver to each recipient a machine with unique, non-repeating connections of the cylinders.

In contrast, all military versions of the Enigma had the same connections, so that the officers working on ciphers in various military units could easily communicate. This was possible provided these officers had the same key, along with the cylinder connection, the secret of Enigma.

It is estimated that during World War II between 100,000 and 200,000 Enigma machines like this were used.

In order to explain, even in general terms, the details pertaining to the role of the connections of the cylinders, and hence to understand what is happening inside the machine, one has to apply combinatorics, especially permutations. Rejewski and his colleagues were borrowing heavily from the theory of permutations , cycles, transpositions, etc.

Let me now explain the connection to Polish women. Well, our cryptologists noticed certain combinatorial regularities. For example in the following 9-letter long message, FDW KRM KSA, it happens that the fourth and the seventh letter is the same. When the fourth and the seventh letters, or the fifth and the eighth or the sixth and the ninth letters are the same – these situations were termed women. Apparently, 11 or 12 messages out of 100 are women. And why beautiful women? How could it be otherwise? One also has to mention Zygulski’s sheets, genius though time-consuming perforated sheets which were helpful in the determination of the sequence of rotors.

World War II and the Fate of our Cryptologists

With this complex situation, one has to be astonished at the arrogance of the German engineers who were certain that the Enigma codes were unbreakable. Remember, though, that cryptology was still in its infancy and as my colleague, Dr. Tom Korner of Cambridge University writes, even in 1996, Cambridge University Library stores its cryptology acquisitions in the paleography division, between stenography and ancient Greek. It turned out, as Marian Rejewski remarks, that in order to break the Enigma codes, one did not need to know the connections of the cylinders, nor the daily keys; what was needed was a certain number of these dispatches sent the given day – about 60 of them. With such a sample, one could recover the given password. In 1934, in Warsaw, the first (Polish) replica of the Enigma was built, by the company AVA. In July 1939, after a dinner in the restaurant of the Bristol Hotel, there was a secret meeting between French, British, and Polish cryptologists. The meeting took place in Kabackie Lasy, near the village Pyry, south of Warsaw. After a pleasant conversation in German (this was the language common to all the parties involved), the guests saw the Polish copies of the German Enigma. The French and the British could not believe that the Poles had prepared such gifts. Each of the cryptologists received one copy of the Enigma code along with the complete set of the related information.

On the 16th of August 1939, French General Gustave Bertrand carried one Enigma copy from Paris to London and personally delivered it to the head of British Intelligence, Commander Stewart Menzies. Less than two weeks later the German Army invaded Poland. The Polish Cipher Bureau and its employees were evacuated to Romania, whence they were transported to France, where they worked constantly to improve the German Enigma.

After the German invasion of France, our cryptologists tried to evacuate to Great Britain. However, while crossing the Spanish border, some of them fell into German captivity. Major Ciezki and engineer Palluth were arrested. Langner, Ciezki, and Palluth lectured at Adam Mickiewicz University to Rejewski, Zygalski, and Rozycki at the end of the 1920s. The engineer Palluth died on April 19, 1944, hit by a splinter of an Allied bomb during the air raid of the labor camp. Langner and Ciezki were placed in German camps as POWs and were released by the Allies. Jerzy Rozycki, the third of Wroclaw cryptologists was killed even earlier – on January 9th 1942 when the ship that he was on drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. Only Marian Rejewski and Henryk Zygalski made it to Great Britain. There they joined Polish military units. They were working on some German codes, but the British did not assign them to constantly improved Enigma codes. In light of Russian- British agreements even their unit was dismantled. After the war Marian Rejewski returned to Poland.

Before coming to the United States, as a young assistant professor at the Wroclaw University I took part in the meeting of the Polish Mathematical Society in Lodz. The honorary guest of that meeting was Mgr Marian Rejewski. The hall, filled with mathematicians, loudly applauded the modest Mr. Rejewski. He died in 1980. Dr. Zbigniew Piotrowski Translated by Sean Martin

Jan Nowak-Jeziorański is a representative of the first generation born in a resurrected Poland. He was a graduate of the Adam Mickiewicz Gimnazium in Warsaw. He was a soldier in the September 1939 Defense Campaign and legendary courier of the Main Command of the Home Army. He participated in the Warsaw Uprising. He was director of the Polish Section of Radio Free Europe. He was a great leader who helped pave the way for Poland into NATO.

With his departure, Poland loses a man of steel. He was a man who fought tirelessly for Poland’s appropriate position in the world. In recent years, he was our voice of conscience. He frequently reinforcing his message that we must not squander our miraculously regained freedom for which many generations sacrificed so many lives. In August of 2002 he wrote,

Even for a second, we must not lose sight of the fact that the present balance of power, which offers a blissful sense of security, can fall apart as unexpectedly as it emerged.

We will greatly miss his voice of wisdom calling upon us to treasure our greatest common good -Poland. We are indebted to the legendary “Courier from Warsaw” for his determination and sacrifice in fighting for Poland, and for his unshakable belief in ultimate victory. With reverence, we bid farewell and pay homage to Jan Nowak-Jeziorański, the remarkable son of the greatest generation.

RFE’s programming was divided into 4 blocks, each 4 and ½ hours in length , and broadcast from 5:00 a.m. until 11:00 p.m. daily. Besides current news, there was coverage of politics, education, culture and even entertainment. All of the texts of RFE were created for and directed at the objective of joining listeners in a sense of unity and purpose: to keep hope alive in a captive and terrorized nation. Major goals were to expose the omnipotent authority of the U.B. (The Polish Ministry of Security- Public Security Service), its propaganda, deceitful accusations, repression and falsification of history and allowing Poles to learn the truth by revealing the true crimes and criminals.

The number one subject of the station was the political scene as it existed between Poland and the Soviet Union, particularly in the area of political games played out at the top levels of the Communist Party. Not without reason, a joke circulated that top party officials listened to the broadcasts from Munich to find out what positions they played on the chessboard of power currently and would in the future. In only the second year of its existence, reliable information was obtained by the station in the case of the escape of Joseph Swiatlo, a highly placed official of the U.B.. Swiatlo provided real facts about the prosecution of former soldiers of the Home Army, how their court cases were built on lies and the sentences meted out were based on groundless findings and often included death penalties. In more recent times, particularly during the rise of the Solidarity movement, the radio was first to inform the people about efforts to democratize the country and make known the persecution of those opposing the regime; particularly about the murder of Father Popieluszko, and the fatal beating of Gregorz Przemyk, a high school student who happened to be the son of a well known activist of the opposition movement.

Without exception, whoever was at the top of the Communist party in Poland, whether it was Boleslaw Bierut, Wladyslaw Gomulka, Edward Gierek or Wojciech Jaruzelski, Radio Free Europe was for them, enemy number one. Journalists working for Radio Free Europe were held in contempt and continually under fire by the party bosses, each with his own set of epitaphs for the station until it became a unique symbol of evil, variously known as the “Squawker of the Imperialists,” “the incubator of sabotage against Poland”, “ the reptile press from Munich working in collaboration with foreign intelligence sources.” Such invectives were used in endless (and often creative) diatribes against the station.

The most pressured individual was the chief editor and director of the station who served in his position the longest ( from 1951 to 1975) Jan Nowak Jezioranskiborn Zdzislaw Jezioranski. He was accused of all that was horrible and evil – from being mentally ill to being a Nazi collaborator during Hitler’s occupation of Poland.

Actually, Jan Nowak’s entire life was dedicated to the service of Poland and the Polish people, whether it was with arms in hand during the outbreak of war in 1939, as a courier crossing many borders at great risk to reach England, or as a soldier in the Home Army fighting in the Warsaw Uprising. As Director of the RFE, he was skilled at discharging his duties. He was able to secure the independence of the station’s programming because he knew how to talk to the American institutions financing the station who were not particularly knowledgeable about the fine points or specifics of Polish politics and issues.

The funding of the station was adequate to ensure salaries for the employees, as well as fund emigrant writers, artists and editors banned from publishing or producing their creations in Poland.

Even though there was a careful process of screening candidates for positions at RFE, there were mistakes. A highly publicized affair was the disclosure that Capt. Andrzej Czechowicz, employed by the station for seven years turned out to be an intelligence officer of the Polish government and the U.B. Upon accomplishing his mission, he returned to Poland and communist propaganda sources ecstatically gloated about his success and how Czechowicz had misled Western intelligence services. He wrote two books and many articles about his experiences as a spy. Having disclosed his true identity and operations, he quickly became useless in that capacity. Attempts to infiltrate the station were many, some with success, but none were so widely publicized.

As testament to the formidable foe that RFE was for the communists, was the practice of jamming the radio-station’s airwaves. Humorists called the station “Buczka” or “The Buzzing” due to the buzzing, droning, clicking and other annoying sounds that were well known to the listeners. It was radio for the patient and determined, or residents of smaller towns and cities. The larger cities were saturated with Polish and Soviet jamming equipment. The expenses incurred to install and maintain huge networks of jamming transmitters have been estimated at 80 million zlotys annually. Even with such a huge effort, it was impossible to deaden the sound or distort the signal completely.

After many years, the words of Jan Nowak have come to pass. Every year Jan Nowak would address his staff “Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the persistent vision I have before me. I imagine that there will come a day when we will board a train between Munich and Warsaw and that we will arrive in our own country which has been liberated and is independent. I truly, deeply believe that this will occur during our lifetimes.”

The final sign-off of Polish Radio Free Europe’s signal occurred June 21, 1994. Jan Nowak Jezioranski died in January 2005 in Warsaw.

Elzbieta Ulanowska

Translated by Zofia Wisniewski