Word: mikolajczyk
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...People. Mikolajczyk became the first peasant to be elected president of the Poznan Farming Association-an event that raised the provincial gentry's eyebrows. He also became a follower of Wincenty Witos, greatest of Polish peasant leaders. Grand, gruff old Witos watched his disciple with peasant skepticism. "Mikolajczyk is no peasant," he once growled. "He has neither the peasant's character, nor his sense of humor, nor his bad habits." But the peasants dissented. They kept voting for their Poznan farmer; in 1930 they sent him to the Sejm (Parliament) in Warsaw. When Witos was forced into exile...
...World War II Mikolajczyk fought again as a private, escaped from the military debacle to Hungary, thence to France. There President Ignace Paderewski made him Vice Premier of the Polish National Council, the Parliament of the Polish Government in Exile...
...Mikolajczyk's activities in exile led to 'the arrest of his wife Cecylia and his son Marjan, who were still in the homeland. Both survived long imprisonment. Both are now in England. Until Mme. Mikolajczyk dies, she will bear upon her hand Slave Number 64023, branded there by the Nazis of Oswiecim...
...Distinction. The years of exile were decisive for Mikolajczyk. They broadened his horizon, gave him his first direct contact with Western democrats and with the foreshadowed ideological struggle for Europe bound to come with the end of the war. He learned English by doggedly rising each morning at 6 a.m. 'for an hour's study, impressed the British as a "man of distinction." In London Mikolajczyk's arguments with dynamic Premier General Wladyslaw Sikorski brought out his special qualities. Slow, verbose Mikolajczyk always lost the verbal bouts to Sikorski. Mikolajczyk would withdraw in confusion, then write...
When Sikorski died in an airplane crash at Gibraltar, Mikolajczyk, at 42, became Prime Minister of the exile government. When Moscow created the rival puppet Polish government, which is still the hard core of the provisional regime in Warsaw, Mikolajczyk shuttled across half the globe -from London to Washington to Moscow-to see on what terms the Poles of London and the Poles of Lublin could get together. He talked and chain-smoked with Joseph Stalin in the Kremlin, parleyed with the Lublin left-wingers, worked out a compromise disowned by the right-wingers in London. He resigned in November...