The Deputy Director of the Warsaw Rising Museum in Poland, Dr Pawel Ukielski, recently opened a new permanent exhibit at the Ditsong National Museum of Military History in Johannesburg following the 80th anniversary memorial service of the 1944 rising.
Following his opening remarks and those of Poland’s Ambassador to South Africa during the opening ceremony on 7 September, Adam Burakowski, Ukielski told defenceWeb why they had created the exhibit ‘Warsaw Rising 1944’: “We wanted to tell the story about the Warsaw Rising, one of the most important events in Polish history of Second World War, to make South African audiences more familiar with the topic, especially because we had brotherhood of arms as South African airman were flying to Warsaw with air drops with support for fighting insurgents.”
Ukielski described a meeting with veteran pilots decades after the airlift, which included SAAF Navigator Lieutenant Bryan Jones, who was shot down and taken prisoner over Warsaw on the 13th of August.
“Our insurgent veterans were always stressing very strongly how important was the support from them (Allied airmen), not only because of supplies but also for their morale – they believed they were not alone. Therefore, they wanted us at the museum to commemorate those brave guys properly. That’s why we decided to build a full-scale replica of one of those bombers they were flying with, the Liberator. We had to take the plans from American archives, which was not very easy because it was still classified and our minister of defence had to ask the American secretary of defence to declassify it for that purpose, which he did.
“We are probably the only place outside the US where the plans of the Liberator bomber are held, and based on that, we built the replica. And for the 62nd anniversary of the Warsaw Rising, we invited all the still-living airmen who were over Warsaw; about a dozen of them came, among them Bryan Desmond Jones, one of the South African airmen, and he entered the museum, he looked up, and saw the Liberator, and asked me: ”Wow, how did you put it inside?” Then we knew we had succeeded, that the replica is professional and good work.
The replica Liberator was unveiled at the Warsaw Rising Museum in Warsaw, Poland, in May 2006 to help tell the story of the Allied airdrops.
The Johannesburg museum exhibition commemorates the Polish Home Army, or Armie Krajowa (AK), formed by the Polish government-in-exile which had fled the country following the invasion and occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939. It first fled to France and in 1940, following Germany’s invasion of that country, to Britain. Many Free Poles flew in the air forces of France and then in the British Royal Air Force (RAF), making a significant contribution to the Battle of Britain.
In 1943, the exile government formed the Polish 2nd Corps which distinguished itself in many battles in Italy, notably at Monte Cassino where the Poles were the first to capture the ruins of the Benedictine Monastery. Their cemetery contains the following lines:
For our freedom and yours
We soldiers of Poland gave
Our soul to God
Our life to the soil of Italy
Our hearts to Poland
Polish soldiers of the 1st Independent Parachute Brigade also fought in another of WW II’s great battles, the attempt to capture the bridge over the Rhine at Arnhem, the biggest airborne operation in history.
