Category Archives: nationalism

by | 9 March 2026 · 9:49 pm

Zygmunt Kwas, Kielce Boy Scout

Adapted from Muzeum Historii Kielc biography:

Zygmunt Kwas (aka Kościelny) was born in Kielce on 18 February 1926. From 1937 to 1939, he belonged to the 12th Kielce Scout Troop, along with Wojtek Szczepaniak; he joined the clandestine Scouting movement in November 1939. Together with Stanisław Wdowicz (aka Borzęcki), whom he met while working as a messenger at the Ludwików Steelworks, he published the Scout magazine Powstaniec [Insurgent]. Along with his friend Zygmunt Pietrzak (aka Bekas), he joined the [anticommunist] Nie organization in 1945. In May of that year, he freed the wounded Pietrzak, arrested by the Security Office, from the prison hospital by disarming a prison guard.

In 1946, Kwas was arrested and imprisoned in Kielce prison. He was subjected to a brutal interrogation. On 13 September, under unclear circumstances, he was shot in his cell by a guard and died shortly thereafter. The funeral was attended not only by Scouts from the Kielce “Gray Ranks” but also by numerous Scouts from all units, as well as schoolchildren, acquaintances, and friends. He was buried at the Old Cemetery in Kielce.

Since 1993, the street running along the Old Cemetery, near his grave, formerly that of [Soviet General] Ivan Konev, has been named after him.

Much more here.

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Filed under biography, Germany, nationalism, Poland, USSR, war

by | 8 March 2026 · 9:10 am

Polityka Replaces Po Prostu, 1957

From Ryszard Kapuscinski: A Life, by Artur Domoslawski (Verso, 2012), Kindle pp. 103-104:

The place on the political and cultural map of People’s Poland where this intellectual can find a safe haven is the newly founded weekly Polityka (Politics). Sacked from his job as managing editor of Sztandar Młodych, Marian Turski has moved to Polityka, bringing with him the group of journalists who resigned in a gesture of solidarity against his dismissal. Among them is Kapuściński.

Polityka had a terrible start. It was established in January 1957 by the Central Committee secretariat. Stefan Żółkiewski – Marxist scholar of the humanities, and minister of higher education (years later, to show solidarity, he would support the Warsaw University students demonstrating against the authorities) – was put in charge. This happened before the closure of the revisionist weekly Po Prostu – Polityka was meant to be a whip to beat the revisionists, an anti–Po Prostu publication. It was seen as heralding the departure of First Secretary Gomułka from the ideals of October ’56, and as a desire to exercise full control over intellectual life and thought, which had been relatively free during the years of the thaw and the October movement.

The revisionists from Po Prostu – ‘the rabid’, as their opponents call them – regard Polityka as a ‘despot’s organ’, a paper that on Gomułka’s orders is to determine the political line for the entire press. Both editorial offices are located within the Palace of Culture and Science, Po Prostu on the fifth floor and Polityka on the eleventh. The Po Prostu people are so allergic to the Polityka people that when they don’t have enough glasses in their office, and the head of administration amicably wants to borrow some from Polityka six floors above, the Po Prostu staff have a meeting, debate the idea, hold a vote and reject it.

When Gomułka closes down Po Prostu in the autumn of 1957, the editors of Polityka welcome the move. Many people assume that once the revisionists’ weekly has been eliminated, Polityka will have carried out Party orders and may leave the press scene. Meanwhile, under the management of its new chief, Mieczysław Rakowski, a former political officer and Party apparatus man, Polityka is changing from a dull, sermonizing newspaper into the most interesting weekly with a Party stamp. It will train the journalistic stars of the generation, create the Polish school of reportage and become a notorious thorn in the side of the government, a disparaging and sometimes ironic internal critic of the Party and the realities of People’s Poland. Marian Turski will say that Polityka began by being branded anti–Po Prostu but ended up becoming a sequel to its revisionist predecessor.

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Filed under democracy, literature, nationalism, philosophy, Poland, publishing

by | 7 March 2026 · 8:48 am

The Thaw Hits Poland, 1956

From Ryszard Kapuscinski: A Life, by Artur Domoslawski (Verso, 2012) Kindle pp. 83-85:

When did the cultural dissent, later known as revisionism, cease to be partly fashion and become front-line politics?

It starts with a secret speech by Khrushchev, given in February 1956 in Moscow at the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party. Its content creates a sensation in Poland: here is the Soviet Party admitting to murder, to the destruction of its political opponents, to fabricated trials. Knowledge of similar methods used by the authorities in People’s Poland has already reached certain segments of public opinion: almost two years earlier, Józef Światło, deputy director of Department X at the Ministry of Public Security, defected to the West and exposed crimes committed by the Polish apparatus of repression (his department was involved in eradicating ideological deviations within the Party). The Poles hear these revelations on Radio Free Europe; those who are glued to their wireless sets manage to catch bits of these nightmarish stories despite the jamming devices working at full steam.

Khrushchev’s speech initiates a political earthquake throughout the socialist bloc, most of all in Poland and Hungary. It is discussed at Party meetings, in cultural circles and on the streets. Duplicated using crude methods, the key points of the speech can be bought for an astronomical sum at flea markets and bazaars. At exactly the same time, Polish Party leader Bolesław Bierut dies in mysterious circumstances, prompting a wave of speculation: Was he murdered? Soon there’s a popular saying: ‘He went out in a fur overcoat and came home in a wooden overcoat.’ Straight after that the Party’s number two, Jakub Berman, is thrown out of his job. The Party is bursting from the inside.

There is a clash between two tendencies, later called fractions. One group is known as the ‘Puławians’ – people who seek more civic freedom, relative autonomy in cultural life, more democracy within the Party, less central planning within the economy, and more independence for enterprises. They have the sympathy of opinion-forming circles and of many people in the press and the cultural world. (It is interesting to note that they meet at the flat of Ignacy Loga-Sowiński, secretary of the Central Council of Trade Unions, and Irena Tarłowska, still editor-in-chief of Sztandar Młodych). The other group is called the ‘Natolinians’. They are believed to have connections with the Soviet embassy; they’re not keen on democratization, but they’re not against sacrificing a few scapegoats, preferably of Jewish origin, on the altar of squaring accounts with Stalinism.

The political prisoners are released, including people from the post-war anti-communist underground as well as followers of the ‘new faith’, who were locked up for being critical or as a result of internal power struggles. Functionaries within the apparatus of repression who have been particularly cruel to the prisoners lose their jobs and are accused of abusing their power. The Stalinist system is collapsing . . .

In June the workers’ rebellion in Poznań occurs. After several days of strikes and street demonstrations, the army and the secret police fire on the protestors. Several dozen people are killed, and many are wounded. A Party plenum calls the Poznań revolt ‘counter-revolutionary’ and a campaign by ‘imperialist circles’. Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz warns that any hand raised against the people’s power will be cut off. The entire movement for renewal finds itself under threat. A day after the massacre, on the orders of the Party leadership, Sztandar Młodych – like other papers – writes about the tragedy in a tone ringing with Stalinist propaganda:

…

The Poznań tragedy is a shock, especially for those who still believe in socialism but want it to be thoroughly reformed. As a result, the workers’ protest, the massacre and the Party leadership’s conservative attitude to the tragedy accelerate the impetus for change. At the production plants, workers councils are established, and pro-democratization rallies are held at schools and colleges. The culmination of the political turmoil is a Party plenum held in October. Comrades from Moscow fly to Warsaw, headed by Soviet Communist Party First Secretary Khrushchev, and Soviet troops move towards the capital. There is a fear that their tanks will run down the Polish movement for the renewal of socialism.

The crisis ends with the election of a new Party chief, Władysław Gomułka, who led the communists during the war and who has recently been released from prison. He was sent to jail in the early 1950s for so-called rightist–nationalist leanings. Gomułka – who installed the Stalinist system in post-war Poland, took part in the elimination of the opposition, and agreed to Poland’s becoming subordinate to the Soviet Union – did, however, want Polish socialism to retain some specific national features. He was not a fan of collectivization; he was in no rush to condemn the ‘Yugoslav path to socialism’, which was independent of Stalin; and he was fond of the national features of Polish Socialist Party tradition.

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Filed under democracy, economics, labor, nationalism, philosophy, Poland, USSR

by | 17 February 2026 · 9:03 am

Papal Thoughts on Kielce

Papież Jan Paweł II w homilii wygłoszonej 3 czerwca 1991 w Masłowie k. Kielc:
Pope John Paul II in his homily delivered on June 3, 1991, in Masłów near Kielce.

W lipcu 1946 roku w Kielcach,
zginęło ze zbrodniczych rąk wielu braci Żydów.
Polecamy ich dusze Bogu.

In July 1946, in Kielce,
many of our Jewish brothers were slain by murderous hands.
We entrust their souls to God.

Papież Franciszek w liście z 1 marca 2016 do rabina Abrahama Skorki.
Pope Francis on March 1, 2016, in his letter to rabbi Abraham Skórka.

Odnośnie tego, co napisałeś mi dziś na temat Kielc, zawsze będę po stronie przebaczenia i pojednania. Otwarte rany to nic dobrego, i mogą prowadzić do dalszych zakażeń. Ale kiedy się zasklepią, zostają jedynie blizny które, z czasem, stają się integralną pozostałością w naszej historii.

Regarding what you told me about Kielce, my position has always been and will continue to be filled with forgiveness and reconciliation. Open wounds are bad and can produce other kinds of infections. But once they are closed, only scars will remain which, with time, will become integral relics of our history.

Respecto a lo que me hace saber de Kielce, mi postura siempre fue y sigue siendo del perdón y reconciliación. Las heridas abiertas hacen mal y producen otro tipo de infecciones, en cambio, una vez cerradas sólo quedan cicatrices que, a la larga, se integran en el camino de nuestra historia.

Thoughts inscribed on the wall of ul. Planty 7, Kielce, site of the pogrom of 4 July 1946.

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Filed under Argentina, language, nationalism, Poland, religion

by | 12 February 2026 · 3:06 am

Sugihara’s List and Tadeusz Romer

A few months ago, my wife found an interesting book in a Polish bookstore here. It is titled Lista Sugihary (Sugihara’s List), by Zofia Hartman, a graduate student from Krakow, the site of Schindler’s List, which is now well-known throughout Poland, while Chiune Sugihara remains almost entirely unknown. The Polish edition of her book was published in 2024 by Austeria Press. An English edition titled Sugihara’s List, published in 2025, can be ordered from YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City.

In looking for the English edition, I found a Youtube video of a book talk featuring Zofia Hartman in October 2025 at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York City, sponsored by the Polish Cultural Institute in New York. Hartman’s presentation was followed by a talk by Jolanta Nitoslawska, granddaughter of Polish diplomat Tadeusz Romer, Polish Ambassador in Japan 1937-1941. Romer and most of the refugees ended up in the stateless Shanghai Ghetto until Romer was included in the 1942 prisoner exchange off Africa via MS Gripsholm. He and most of his descendants ended up in Canada. Several others who attended the talk were descendants of the refugees.

Another diplomat who facilitated the exodus of so many Jewish refugees through the USSR to Japan was the Dutch consul in Lithuania, Jan Zwartendijk, who was director of the Philips factories there. Sugihara granted transit visas via Japan, while Zwartendijk granted official permission for the refugees to settle in Curaçao and the Dutch West Indies, if they should ever manage to get there.

One facet of Sugihara that I had not been aware of was his role as a spy for Japan, cooperating with Poland, sharing military intelligence among other areas. There was no Japanese community in Kaunas, where he served as consul. Japan and Poland both feared the USSR, and Japan was eager for evidence that the USSR might transfer troops west to fight the Germans, allowing Japan to transfer some of its troops from Manchuria to the South Pacific. Japan had helped earlier Poles exiled to Siberia and hosted a sizable number of Polish exiles in Karafuto (southern Sakhalin). Even though Poland declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbor, Poles and Japanese continued to cooperate.

In the summer of 2011, we visited the Sugihara Port of Humanity Museum in Tsuruga, Japan, and in the spring of 2025 we visited the Shanghai Ghetto Museum in China. I’m not sure we’ll get a chance to visit the Sugihara House Museum in Kaunas, Lithuania.

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Filed under Germany, Japan, migration, nationalism, Netherlands, Poland, religion, USSR, war

by | 7 February 2026 · 4:18 am

Displaced Poles in World War 2

My latest compilation from Culture.pl includes an article by Juliette Bretan on Polish refugees abroad during World War 2. Here are some excerpts.

Britain proved an early home for thousands of Poles following the invasion of Poland by Nazi and Soviet forces in September 1939. Polish civilians, and those in the armed forces, fled over the Carpathian mountains to Romania and Hungary, with around 90,000 military personnel known to have escaped by the end of September. Many of those in the armed forces reached France via then Yugoslavia and Italy, where new divisions were organised.

After France fell, thousands of Poles in the armed forces, and the Polish government-in-exile, transferred to London. In August 1940, an Anglo-Polish agreement allowed for the Polish land sea and air forces to be organised and employed under British command. Polish fighter and bomber squadrons were created, with Polish pilots destroying nearly 1000 enemy aircraft and dropping nearly 15,000 bombs and mines during the course of the war.

Persia

Following the Nazi invasion of Russia 1941, a treaty – the Sikorski-Mayski agreement – was signed between Poland and the Soviet Union, which included an ‘amnesty’ allowing for the release of many of the Poles who had been deported east. However, many Poles in labour camps were unaware of the development, and even those who were had only limited assistance from the Soviet authorities. Thousands of Poles, however, did manage to move south, joining Władysław Anders’s army as they moved through Russia and central Asia. In 1942, General Sikorski received permission to evacuate Poles into Persia (now Iran), across the Caspian Sea.

Africa

As Zdzisława Wójcik notes, more than half of the 37,000 Polish civilians who left the USSR with the Polish army found new homes in Africa, in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa. Some arrived by sea between 1942-43, and were housed in former POW camps or new settlements, whilst others were transported from refugee camps across the world:

The settlements […] operated their own businesses: farms, canteens, butcher shops, bakeries, and fabric–weaving, sewing and shoemaking shops […] the population in the Polish settlements had a specific demographic profile: about 47 percent were women, over 41.5 percent were teenagers and children, and only 11.5 percent were men. (Wójcik, in The Polish Deportees of World War II)

According to Wójcik, the Catholic Church played a prominent role in structuring Polish communities in Africa, although the number of priests varied by settlement. Support for the refugees was also provided by the Polish Red Cross and bureaus in Nairobi, with schools and orphanages established for children. However, the food available in these orphanages often left much to be desired, as Vala Lewicki – who was based in Uganda – remembers:

Meals were never elaborate affairs. The quick breakfast varied only between a plate of baked beans and a slice of bread with tea and coffee one day, and two slices of sparingly-buttered bread with cocoa or tea the next day. Occasionally we had powdered eggs which tasted like…powder. We had sandwiches for lunch, while dinner consisted of bean soup, a slice of meat and baked beans. Always baked beans! (Vala Lewicki, in The Polish Deportees of World War II)

New Zealand & Mexico

Just under 1000 Poles – 733 children and 105 adults – also found a new home in New Zealand during the war, after Prime Minister of the country accepted the refugees.

Arriving in Wellington in 1944, the refugees were settled in a Polish Children’s Camp in the town of Pahiatua, where Catholic services and Polish schooling and scouting trips were provided. Many of the Polish refugees also chose to settle in New Zealand after the war, finding ample opportunities for work as mining and logging industries expanded.

Meanwhile, a community of 1400 Poles also settled in Santa Rosa in Mexico, where they were welcomed by an orchestra playing the Polish national anthem. The settlement in Santa Rosa included living quarters and a school, where a Polish curriculum was used, as well as gardens and playing areas.

India

It is estimated that around 5000 Poles also found safe haven in India, after the wife of the Polish Consul General to Bombay, Kira Banasińska, petitioned the Maharaja of Nawanagar. The Maharaja had longstanding links to Poland – his father had been friends with pianist Ignacy Paderewski – and said that he was ‘trying to do whatever [he] can to save the children.’

Refugees settled in several camps in and around Bombay, as well as in a settlement built at the Maharaja’s summer palace. Polish culture remained an integral part of life, with Catholic teaching organised, Polish books provided, and the children also encouraged to give performances featuring traditional Polish dances and music. Sport was also encouraged: following the arrival of pre-war Lvovian footballer Antoni Maniak, a stadium and running track was built, and regular training sessions established to improve the children’s health and wellbeing. The Maharaja donated money to purchase sporting equipment – and the children proved themselves worthy foes against local teams.

The refugees dubbed the settlement camps ‘Little Poland’.

The Polish Red Cross supported the orphans who were being settled in India, although Ordonówna accompanied the first transport of children out of the Middle East, despite battling the symptoms of tuberculosis, which would later kill her.

Post-war resettlement

At the end of the war, many Poles were unable to return to their homeland. The British government recognised the contribution of Poles in the Allied forces, and established the Polish Resettlement Act, the first mass immigration legislation, in 1947, which offered British citizenship and support for hundreds of thousands of Poles. Following the act, transports were provided to enable their relatives to also reach the UK. Four thousand Poles arrived in overland transports from Italy by rail, whilst several ships carrying hundreds of displaced Poles arrived in ports in Southampton, Liverpool, Hull, London and Glasgow in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This included a transport of 66 Poles from Santa Rosa in Mexico, who travelled aboard the Empire Windrush in its historic passage to London in 1948; around 400 Poles – including many orphans – from Kilindini Mombasa in Kenya on the SS Scythia, which docked in Liverpool; and 600 displaced women, children and elderly Poles from Cape Town on the RMS Arundel Castle, which arrived in Southampton.

On board one transport from Lebanon in 1950, on the SS Oxfordshire, were also several unexpected passengers – two hives of bees, brought by one man in his 60s. The man was allowed to keep the bees, which he took to Haydon Park resettlement camp. By the early 1950s, over 100,000 Poles were registered in Great Britain. Among them were pre-war cultural figures, including Polish poet and songwriter Marian Hemar, and singers Adam Aston, Zofia Terné and Włada Majewska; as well as artists, including the Themersons and Stanisław Frenkiel. Many of these figures played a significant role in forming Polish communities in the UK post-war.

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Filed under Britain, France, Germany, India, Iran, Kenya, Mediterranean, migration, military, nationalism, Poland, South Africa, USSR, war

by | 2 February 2026 · 8:39 pm

Indian Electrical Mechanical Engineers

From Burma ’44: The Battle That Turned World War II in the East, by James Holland (Grove Atlantic, 2024), Kindle pp. 167-169:

Ascham’s small band of brothers was one of the echelon units attached to any infantry brigade. The fighting heart of a brigade was its three 900-man-strong infantry battalions – one British, one Indian and one Gurkha – but there were also support troops, from artillery to mules to engineers and signals to Ascham’s Indian Electrical Mechanical Engineers, who were there directly in support of the brigade’s motor transport – MT – in the field. Ascham’s team were, in essence, a mobile workshop, and here in the jungle they were absolutely essential. In this treacherous fighting terrain, Slim and others had recognized that, as far as was humanly possible, fighting units had to be as self-sufficient at the front as they could be. It was no good a number of Jeeps and trucks slogging their way down Slim’s new brick roads from Bengal, across the newly hewn Ngakyedauk Pass and down into the Kalapanzin Valley only to suffer a collapsed axle or need a new gasket and discover there was no means of rectifying the problem. This, then, was where Ascham’s seventy-five Indian Electrical Mechanical Engineers came in. Their task was to maintain the fighting capacity of the brigade’s MT.

The single most important piece in their armoury was their large, 3-ton, four-wheel-drive workshop lorry. It had a powerful winch at the front and a canvas roof over a mobile workshop behind. This was kitted out with an impressive array of equipment: there was a lathe, a vertical drilling machine, a workbench with vices, racks for heavy tools, oxy-acetylene welding equipment, battery-charging gear, a vat of sulphuric acid, hydraulic jacks, hoisting equipment to lift engines, transmission blocks and other heavy items, as well as awnings, which could be slung from the sides of the truck or between trees. This meant they could, in theory, repair pretty much anything right there, in the field. They also had five further 3-ton lorries, a large-capacity water tank, three Jeeps with trailers and a BSA motorcycle, which helped them little, but to which Ascham had become quite attached. One of the Jeep trailers had been made into a generator from the engine of a wrecked Jeep they had discovered and they used this to power their welding equipment or to provide lighting. A second trailer was used to store spare parts, while the unit also had office equipment, tents, tables, benches, cooking gear, and weapons, including rifles, a machine gun and grenades.

Ascham’s engineers were a disparate bunch of young men, drawn from all corners of India’s vast reach and including Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. Although some twenty-two different languages were used throughout the country, they had all learned to speak just one, Urdu, and were bound by a different type of language: mechanical and electrical engineering. As their officer, Ascham had made sure he learned Urdu, and fluently too, which understandably gave him a closer bond with his men. They all looked much the same too, after long months working out in the heat and sun; while trousers and shirt sleeves were religiously worn during the evenings, no one bothered much about wearing shirts during the day and so all were tanned the colour of coffee and, of course, everyone wore the same uniforms of olive-drab khaki drill, black boots and – the few Sikhs excepted – black berets.

The hierarchy was easily absorbed: Ascham was the boss, but the Indian NCOs were also held in very high esteem. A jemadar was the equivalent of a warrant officer, a havildar of a sergeant and a naik the same as a corporal, and yet Indian NCOs were accorded a level of respect and status that was higher than their British Army counterparts. ‘You were taught to look up to them,’ noted Ascham. ‘In a way, they were the Indian Army. It could not possibly have functioned without them. They advised, discreetly. They handled awkward incidents, privately. Their personal loyalty to you and the unit was essential.’ It was a system that Ascham certainly believed worked brilliantly well, and he was both proud and fond of his men, who, despite their differences of background, culture, religion and language, were all bound by what he felt was a palpable sense of honour, loyalty and, almost above all, good humour. They would undoubtedly need it in the weeks to come.

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by | 31 January 2026 · 11:31 pm

V Force Intelligence in Burma

From Burma ’44: The Battle That Turned World War II in the East, by James Holland (Grove Atlantic, 2024), Kindle pp. 86-89:

There were code-breakers too, and radio listening, but possibly the most important of all – especially to those now heading to the front – was V Force.

This extraordinary group of native Burmese under British command operated all along the front and were purely intelligence gatherers and reconnaissance – but they were mightily effective. The commanders had detailed knowledge of the local language, culture and conditions. One of them, based further to the north-east in the Naga Hills, was indicative of the unorthodox approach taken by V Force: Ursula Graham Bower was an anthropologist who had befriended the Naga head-hunters before the war, and, as her Christian name suggested, was a woman.

Another was Captain Anthony Irwin, who was operating in the Arakan, and running his own team under the overall charge of one of the V Force originals, Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Donald.

…

V Force were the eyes and ears of the British effort in the Arakan. While Irwin was dependent on his local recruits to collect intelligence, his task was to be the brains behind the operation. An inadequate brain, it seemed to him to begin with, but he learned quickly enough. On parting, Donald had told him: ‘Trust [your] men with everything you’ve got, and they will never let you down.’ Nearly a year on, Irwin knew those had been wise words indeed.

‘These men’ were Mussulmen – local Muslims who had settled in the area some two hundred years earlier. There was now an ethnic split in the Arakan between Muslim and Maugh, who were Hindu, which had led to civil war in the area as recently as 1941; like any civil conflict, it had been brutal, with entire villages decimated by the opposing factions. The result had been that the southern half of the Arakan was now predominantly Maugh, while the north was almost entirely Muslim. This local tragedy rather played into the hands of the British, however, because the Arakan had been conveniently split into two distinct spheres of influence, something they were able to exploit. Muslims hated Maughs and, because the Maughs were helping the Japanese, they hated the Japanese too. Conversely, the Maughs were willing to work for the Japanese against the Mussulmen and, by association, the British. There were two factors, however, that made this a better deal for the British than for the Japanese. The first was that most of the fighting so far had been in the north of the Arakan, where there were fewer Maughs. The second was that because the Japanese held dear the cult of racial superiority, they treated all conquered people with violent contempt, including the Maughs. Furthermore, because Japanese forces were generally so badly supplied – especially with food – they tended to loot what they could from the Burmese without paying any kind of compensation. This was not conducive to winning trust.

Irwin very quickly became an ardent Burmese Mussulman-ophile. They were tenacious, courageous and had an uncanny knack for remembering data. Details of enemy columns were recalled with accuracy; they could tell Japanese planes from Allied long before Irwin himself could ever distinguish them. They would remember with precision exactly where enemy dispositions were and be able to mark them on a map. ‘If they see a British soldier lying wounded and lost in the jungle, they will get him in somehow,’ noted Irwin. Barney Barnett of 136 Squadron, had first-hand experience of this: ‘If they see a Jap body, they will cut off the head and proudly bring it to me, demanding baksheesh’, he noted.

Once, Irwin was sent a map, beautifully drawn and with Japanese positions clearly marked. Also written on the map was a note. ‘Many Japs are looting the publics,’ had been neatly scrawled in pidgin English. ‘Please tell the bombing mans and bomb nicely. Please tell the bombing mans that there are many good publics near and only to kill the Japanese.’

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Filed under Bangladesh, Britain, Burma, India, Japan, language, military, nationalism, religion, war

by | 28 January 2026 · 9:54 pm

How to Feed British Indian Troops

From Burma ’44: The Battle That Turned World War II in the East, by James Holland (Grove Atlantic, 2024), Kindle pp. 50-52:

These 500,000 men had to be fed three meals every single day and, because of the castes, religions, tribes and nationalities involved, an added complication was the thirty different ration scales needed to feed the army. Fresh meat was difficult both to source and to transport, and refrigeration was limited to say the least, so for those who could eat meat the only solution was to provide them with tinned corned beef, or bully beef as it was called, although this was monotonous and lacked the nutrients of fresh meat. Hindus and Muslims, however, could not eat tinned meat, so they had to go without altogether. The trouble was, acceptable substitutes, milk and ghi – clarified butter – were not available in the right quantities either. Much of the tinned milk sent from Britain and America simply did not survive the long journey. The result was a severe shortage of food supplies. At the Assam front, [Gen. William] Slim discovered that instead of the 65,000 tons that should have been stored at the base depot in Dimapur, there were just 47,000 tons, a deficiency of nearly 30 per cent, and much of the shortfall worked against the Indian troops. ‘The supply situation was indeed so serious,’ wrote Slim, ‘that it threatened the possibility of any offensive.’

Part of the problem was bad management at Delhi, and Slim and Snelling were appalled to discover that the system of peacetime financial control was still in place when it came to procurement. Incredibly, if large quantities of dehydrated food were ordered from Indian contractors, demands for tinned supplies from Britain were then cancelled. On the face of it, that was fair enough, but it had been decreed that dehydrated vegetables were, in terms of scale of issue, a quarter that of tinned goods. In other words, for every 100 tons of dehydrated goods ordered in India, 400 tons of tinned veg orders from Britain were cancelled. This was bad enough, but made worse because there was always a massive discrepancy between the quantities ordered in India and those that were ever actually delivered. Consequently, shortages had been allowed to escalate quickly.

To try to solve this, Slim and Snelling had gone to see Auchinleck in person, who vowed to deal with the supply issues as a matter of urgency. By cutting red tape and tightening the administration of food supply, Auchinleck’s staff at Delhi were able steadily to increase the flow of rations. In fact, just acknowledging earlier shortcomings was a marked step in the right direction.

Despite this improvement, both Slim and Snelling realized they needed to adopt a very hands-on approach themselves; it was no good depending on Delhi to sort out their supply issues. As a result, other sources of meat, such as sheep and goats, were reared locally where possible. They also hired some Chinese to set up duck-rearing farms for both meat and eggs, while along the Imphal front 18,000 acres of vegetables were cultivated.

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Filed under Britain, food, military, nationalism, religion, South Asia, U.S., war

by | 17 January 2026 · 8:46 am

Polish Diaspora in France

My latest compilation from Culture.pl has an article on the Polish diaspora in France. Here are some excerpts:

When we think of the Polish diaspora, France is rarely the first place that comes to mind – often overshadowed by the UK, the US or Germany. Yet the Polish presence in France is older, more complex and more deeply woven into the country’s cultural fabric than most realise.

Through interviews with contemporary Polish migrants and archival research into historical communities, a layered story emerges – one as much about shared histories as it is about work, struggle and identity. Beginning with 19th-century exile, expanding through interwar labour migration, and continuing into today’s cosmopolitan realities, Poles have long helped shape the life of their adopted country. And France, in turn, has shaped them.

The earliest sustained Polish presence in France took shape in the 19th century, following the failed November Uprising of 1830-1831. Thousands of officers, intellectuals and activists fled the Russian-controlled partition and sought refuge in France, launching what became known as the ‘Great Emigration’. This wave of political exiles – over 5,000 by 1833 – formed one of the most enduring diasporic communities of the era. Unlike other groups who returned after political amnesties, most remained as long as Poland’s partitioned status endured.

One bold but ultimately unsuccessful plan – to form a Polish legion to fight in Portugal’s Liberal Wars in 1833 – was led by General Józef Bem and reflected the enduring ideal of transnational solidarity. It gave lasting currency to the phrase ‘For our freedom and yours’ (‘Za wolność naszą i waszą’), which became a defining expression of Poland’s internationalist military ethos throughout the 19th century.

Polish émigrés built schools, charitable institutions and political societies. Some were initially settled in places like Belle-Île-en-Mer off the coast of Brittany, while growing numbers made their way to Paris, which would soon become a central hub of Polish cultural and political life in exile.

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Building on these early foundations, Paris evolved into what some would later call ‘Poland’s second capital’. Throughout the 19th century, the city became a vibrant centre where Polish political elites, artists and intellectuals gathered, united by a commitment to preserving national identity in exile.

Nowhere was this more visible than at the prestigious Collège de France, where Polish national poet Adam Mickiewicz was appointed the first Chair of Slavic Literature in Western Europe in 1840. His lectures, a blend of cultural commentary and political advocacy, attracted wide audiences – including figures like George Sand – and reflected diasporic longing for unity and liberation. Though ultimately dismissed for the political intensity of his teachings, Mickiewicz remained an emblematic figure in Franco-Polish cultural relations.

That same spirit of cultural continuity shaped another enduring institution: the Polish School in Paris, founded in 1842 by General Józef Dwernicki and fellow émigrés. The school aimed to raise children in Polish language and tradition, even as they grew up on foreign soil. With Mickiewicz himself serving as vice-president of its council, the institution embodied how deeply intertwined education, culture and politics were in émigré life – a place where Polish identity could be preserved and transmitted across generations born in exile.

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