Tomasz Arciszewski

November 4, 1877 — November 20, 1955

With the outbreak of World War II and the invasion of Poland, Poland’s democratic government fled, first to France, and then to Britain. The Polish government-in-exile would spend the next fifty years in London. Tomasz Arciszewski began his career as a teenaged factory worker, but quickly found himself drawn to politics. He went on to become one of the leaders of the Polish Socialist Party. For the first five years of World War II, he remained in Poland, taking part in the defense of Warsaw in 1939, but was evacuated to London in 1944 shortly before the Warsaw Uprising. Once in London, he became critical of Prime Minister-in-Exile Stanisław Mikołajczyk’s apparent willingness to compromise with Stalin and the Soviet Union. He succeed Mikołajczyk as Poland’s third Prime Minister-in-Exile in November 1944 and became a desperate advocate for Poland’s complete independence from the rising threat of Soviet influence as the Red Army marched east towards Germany, consistently urging the western Allies to send aid to the Polish resistance movement.

Photograph: Wikimedia commons, public domain