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Title: Andrzej Pomian papers
Dates: 1937-1973
Collection Number: 2009C45
Creator: Pomian, Andrzej
Collection Size:
21 manuscript boxes, 1 oversize folder
(8.8 linear feet)
Repository:
Hoover Institution Archives
Stanford, California 94305-6010
Abstract: The collection includes materials related to Poland, the Polish Underground, the Warsaw Uprising, Polish politics and government
during and after World War II and Polish émigré affairs, in the form of correspondence, writings, reports, publications, notes,
and clippings.
Physical Location: Hoover Institution Archives
Languages:
English
Polish
Collection is open for research.
The Hoover Institution Archives only allows access to
copies of audiovisual items. To listen to sound recordings or to view videos or films during your visit, please contact the Archives
at least two working days before your arrival. We will then advise you of the accessibility of the material you wish to see
or hear. Please note that not all audiovisual material is immediately accessible.
For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Archives.
[Identification of item], Andrzej Pomian papers, [Box number], Hoover Institution Archives.
Acquired by the Hoover Institution Archives in 2009.
Materials may have been added to the collection since this finding aid was prepared. To determine if this has occurred, find
the collection in Stanford University's online catalog at
http://searchworks.stanford.edu/ . Materials have been added to the collection if the number of boxes listed in the online catalog is larger than the number
of boxes listed in this finding aid.
Poland. Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych records, Hoover Institution Archives
Poland. Ministerstwo Informacji i Dokumentacji records, Hoover Institution Archives
Wolność i Niezawisłość miscellaneous records, Hoover Institution Archives
Andrzej Pomian, who died in Washington, D.C., in 2008 at the age of ninety-seven, was a Polish émigré journalist and author
who worked for many years for Radio Free Europe. During World War II, he was a ranking officer in the Information and Propaganda
Bureau of Poland's clandestine Stowarzyszenie Polskich Kombatantów or Home Army, the largest underground organization in Nazi-occupied
Europe. Extracted from Poland in April 1944 in one of the most spectacular air operations of the war, Pomian spent the next
ten years with the Polish government in exile in London before moving to the United States.
Andrzej Pomian, the name he assumed during the war, was born Bohdan Salacinski in 1911 in a Polish village in Podolia, the
part of western Ukraine absorbed by the Soviet Union in 1920. Escaping the Soviets, the family moved to Warsaw, where Bohdan
was educated, receiving his law degree from the University of Warsaw in 1932 and remaining at the university as an assistant
professor. From the beginning of the German occupation, Pomian was involved in underground work. He taught law in an underground
university and worked in various units of the resistance, eventually becoming a director of the Information and Propaganda
Bureau, which coordinated the underground intelligence and publication work of the Home Army and controlled underground radio
programming, as well as photographic and film documentation units. The Bureau's "Action N" section published documents in
German aimed at weakening the morale of the German army and colonists in Poland. In general, the Home Army was involved in
sabotage, self-defense, and retaliation activities against the Germans. It also provided key service to the Allies in the
area of intelligence, monitoring troop movements in the east, and the development of German secret V-1 and V-2 rockets. The
primary purpose of the Home Army, however, was to prepare for the anticipated German military collapse and the liberation
of the country. After the Allied landing in Italy and the westward advance of the Red Army, a great national uprising, focused
in Warsaw, was planned for the second half of 1944.
In connection with this plan, the Home Army and underground civilian authorities delegated several officers, including Pomian,
to report to the Polish and British authorities in London on the progress of the preparations. Such contacts were usually
carried out by coded radio transmissions or solitary couriers or emissaries. There were regular night flights from England
or southern Italy to drop supplies and people into occupied Poland. A new joint Polish-Special Operations Executive operation,
Wildhorn I, including actual landing and return flight, was undertaken in the evening of April 15, 1944. A Douglas Dakota,
unarmed but equipped with eight additional fuel tanks, left its base near Brindisi in southern Italy. It flew over the Balkans
and the Carpathian Mountains into Poland, to a stubble field near the city of Lublin, southeast of Warsaw. The field was marked
out by bonfires and secured by several forest companies of the Home Army. Agents and bags of U.S. dollars were unloaded, and
Pomian and his colleagues boarded the Dakota, barely avoiding the intense and bloody firefight that erupted between the Home
Army units and the pursuing Wehrmacht columns. The return flight via Brindisi and Gibraltar brought Pomian to England twenty-four
hours later.
Pomian followed the tragic epilogue of the war in Poland from distant London. During his ten years there, Pomian continued
working for the Polish government in exile, coordinating contacts and organizing financial support for the anticommunist underground
and Home Army veterans. He moved to the U.S. in 1955.
| 1911 January 2 | Born, Bohdan Sałacinski in Czarny Ostrów, in present-day Ukraine |
| 1920 | Evacuates to Poland with his family after the Polish-Russian War |
| 1930s | Studies law at Warsaw University and works in the municipal solicitor general's office |
| 1940s | Practices law and lectures in an underground university after the German occupation of Poland. He also works in the Central Command of the Polish Home Army in the Information and Propaganda Bureau |
| 1944 April | Evacuates from Poland by airplane during Operation Wildhorn I as an emissary to the Polish government-in-exile in London |
| 1944-1954 | Works on the staff of the commander-in-chief of the Polish government-in-exile as leading liaison operations with the Polish underground |
| 1946 | Author, Warsaw Rising |
| 1949 | Author, Stalin and the Poles |
| 1950 | Author, Polish Armed Forces in World War Two: The Home Army |
| 1955 | Emigrates to the United States |
| 1956-1977 | Works as the Washington correspondent for the Polish section of Radio Free Europe |
| 1974-1977 | Completes a three-year assignment in Munich |
| 1977 | Returns to Washington and retires |
| 1977-2000s | Freelances for radio and publishes articles on history, politics, and literature in the Polish Daily (London) and Polish Daily News (New York) |
| 1990 | Author, Poland Defends Her Independence 1918-1945 |
| 1991 | Receives the Warsaw University Medal |
| 2000 | Awarded the Commander's Cross with Star by the president of Poland and receives the Joseph Conrad Literary Award from the Jozef Piłsudski Institute of New York |
| 2008 April 20 | Dies, Washington D.C. |
Scope and Content of Collection
The collection includes materials related to the Polish underground during and after World War II, with particular emphasis
on the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 and the Soviet occupation of Poland, and Polish émigré affairs, in the form of reports, publications,
correspondence, clippings, writings, and notes. The collection encompasses the years 1937-1973, with the bulk of the materials
covering 1944-1954.
The bulk of the material relates generally to Andrzej Pomian's work as the assistant director of the Information and Propaganda
Bureau of the Home Army in occupied Poland (1941-1944) and his role as the chief liaison between the Polish underground and
the government-in-exile (1944-1954).
Some correspondence, and some Home Army and government-in-exile material can be found interspersed with post-war notes, clippings,
and publications in the subject file.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
Stowarzyszenie Polskich Kombatantów.
Poles--United States.