A Polish courier who connected resistance, exile, and radio
On 29 July 1944, he told Home Army leaders that substantial Western support was impossible, but the decision to rise did not change.
Jan Nowak-Jeziorański was a courier and journalist who linked the Polish Home Army with the government-in-exile in London. Returning from London in July 1944, he warned Home Army leaders that Western support for an uprising would be limited, but he could not stop the decision to rise, and he broadcast during the Warsaw Uprising. After the war he directed the Polish Service of Radio Free Europe, making exile broadcasting a sustained instrument of political communication. He returned to Poland in 1989 and continued to advocate its integration with the West.
Also known as: Zdzisław Jeziorański · Courier from Warsaw
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1936Assistant in economics at the University of Poznań
- 1941–1943Worked in the Home Army's intelligence and propaganda networks
- 1943–1944Courier between the Home Army and the government-in-exile in London
- 1944.07–10Announcer and editor for Radio Lightning during the Warsaw Uprising
- 1948–1951Editor with the BBC Polish Service
- 1951–1976Founding director of the Polish Service of Radio Free Europe
- 1979–1996National director of the Polish American Congress
- 1989–2005Public advocate of Poland's integration with the West after returning home
Related historical events
Wartime courier missions and reporting the destruction of Polish Jewry
From the early 1940s Nowak-Jeziorański worked in the Home Army's intelligence and propaganda networks, and from 1943 he undertook courier missions to London. His first run was to Sweden in April 1943, hiding aboard a ship to evade detection and reaching Stockholm; in October of the same year he was sent again as an emissary of the Home Army high command, travelling through Sweden and arriving in Britain that December with a report on the Polish Underground State. In London he met the commander-in-chief, Prime Minister Mikołajczyk, President Raczkiewicz and Churchill, and spoke in the British House of Commons.
A significant part of his work as a courier concerned the fate of Polish Jews. He informed Western governments of Poland's condition under German and Soviet occupation, and is recorded as the first to report the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to the West. Obituaries state that he brought news of the extermination of the Jews to London. Courier accounts record five journeys carrying secret documents in both directions between Warsaw and London.
On the night of 25/26 July 1944 he was flown back into occupied Poland in an operation from near Brindisi; other agents travelled on the same aircraft, and one purpose of the operation was to carry captured V-2 rocket components and related intelligence out to the West. He told the Home Army leadership that substantial Western support was impossible, but the decision to rise did not change. During the Uprising he edited the English-language broadcasts, and shortly before it began he married Jadwiga Wolska. On 24 September 1944, at the order of the Home Army commander-in-chief, he and his wife set out for London with the archives of the Uprising, arriving in January 1945.