The two most interesting personalities of WWII, Józef Czapski and General Władysław Anders.

 The two most interesting personalities of WWII, Józef Czapski and General Władysław Anders.

Yes, there was Churchill, and Eisenhower, and Roosevelt, And Stalin and so on. But we are talking about interesting, not conventionally powerful. 

They were as different as friends could be. Anders was a career officer, brave and disciplined as expected in his family and culture.  

Czapski was born into a wealthy aristocratic family, an intellectual, an artist, and a pacifist, but a pacifist who distinguished between an aggression and a defence of one’s homeland and people. 

Both men were taken prisoner by the Soviets. Anders, given his reputation, was taken to the infamous Lubyanka prison in Moscow. What did they expect? To break him? 

And Czapski was one of the thousands taken to Starobielsk but also one of about 400 who were transferred to Gryazovetz. It was a terrible place but for some reason this group was not taken to Katyn to be murdered.  

After the Orwellian amnesty in 1941 the survivors struggled to get to Buzuluk where they joined up with other Polish prisoners who were forming an army under General Anders, himself just released from Lubyanka. 

There, Anders and Czapski met, quite possibly for the first time. The two personalities were so different, and yet so complimentary, and each recognized the other’s strengths and talents.

Anders made a fighting force out starving brutalized men in conditions purposely created to make him fail.

 Inadequate rations, lack of medicines, and indeed supplies of any sort. But he restored their dignity. 

As women and children found their way to the army, Anders and his men shared their meagre rations with them.

Czapski recognized another need, a spiritual and psychological need. While in the Soviet prison, he had given lectures to his fellow prisoners on Proust, in French, and noted their attention, that somehow this intellectual nourishment made up for their privation. He believed the same thing was needed again.

Czapski’s assignment from Anders was to organize classes for the young people whose educations had abruptly come to an end when the war started.

 Czapski took this on readily and also suggested that lectures be organized on various topics for the adults. 

And so began his important work in education, which was continued when the army got to the Middle East and later to Italy.

 In Palestine Czapski added cultural events to the program, his first one was open to the public and advertised in Polish, English and Arabic. 

After the war, when all was lost, Czapski continued his commitment to his country, using his considerable social contacts in Paris to help publish KULTURA, despite the strong opposition of the French Communist Party. He wrote for the magazine and enabled his countrymen to maintain a voice in exile.

Although Anders realized that his country had been betrayed by the allies, he inspired his men to carry on loyally, knowing that thousands of demoralized men left without a goal would only lead to further demoralization. 

They had nothing left but their honour and dignity and without that they would have no future.

It should be added that Anders also saved over 40 thousand women and children, taking them all to the Middle East with the army when it was evacuated from Russia.

 One pf the most impressive wartime documents is the transcript of his meetings with Stalin, insisting that he must take those children with him. Stalin sneered, “And what use are they to an army?” Anders replied, “They are what we are fighting for.” 

It is quite likely that he is the only man who ever argued with Stalin. That transcript teaches how important it is that la country’s leaders must never meet in secret, that a record must be kept, and that each country must have a translator so that their transcripts stand up to scrutiny. 

Anders spoke perfect Russian, but the translators were witnesses to the conversation.