the counterrevolutionary White Armies in the Russian Civil War, Lenin and the other Bolsheviks saw their opportunity to invade Europe. The Allied armies were exhausted, and the Axis armies defeated. Lenin ordered Trotsky and Stalin to conquer the West with a Red Army of eight hundred thousand men and thirty thousand horses. They could have swept away every Western government and created a Red Communist empire from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Except for one problem. An army of barefoot Poles under Marshal Piłsudski stopped them at the gates of Warsaw in 1920. We call it the Miracle on the Vistula. It is the greatest battle of the twentieth century that no one outside of Poland has ever heard of.”
Jack didn’t remember reading about any of that in his history courses.
“And that wasn’t the first time Poland saved Western civilization, either,” Liliana said.
“Enlighten me.”
“In 1683, the Ottoman Empire was marching across Europe undefeated and driving toward Vienna, which they surrounded and besieged with two hundred thousand troops. But the Polish king Sobieski amassed a relief force, and though greatly outnumbered, he led the Winged Hussars in a charge that smashed the Turks and saved Vienna.”
“Wait. I remember now. The Winged Hussars were badasses. Heavy armor polished bright, nineteen-foot-long lances and poles strapped on their backs with eagle feathers that whistled like Stukas when they rode into battle.”
“Were it not for King Sobieski and the Polish Hussars, all of Europe might well have fallen to the Muslim invasion. The Ottoman Empire was never a threat to the Christian West again.”
“I suppose as a Westerner and a Christian, I should thank you.”
“Twice. Or perhaps three times.”
“Three?”
“Polish mathematicians broke the German Enigma code just before World War Two and passed it along to the British, with instructions to Turing on how to build the electromechanical components of his code-breaking machine.”
“I had no idea. So finish the story about your great-uncle.”
“He fought very bravely both at the front and also behind enemy lines during the Polish–Soviet war and was twice awarded the Cross of Valor.”
“He sounds like a stud.”
“He was only just getting started. Between the two world wars he established a cavalry training school and later commanded a cavalry squadron. He fought the Germans when they invaded on the first of September, 1939, and then turned around and fought the Soviets, who invaded on the seventeenth of September. His unit was defeated by the Communists, so he fled to Warsaw and cofounded the Secret Polish Army under German occupation.”
“Did he survive the war?”
“While still one of the commanders of the Polish underground, he heard rumors there was something horrible taking place in a camp called Auschwitz, near Kraków. You know it, of course.”
“Horrific. Inhuman.”
“At the time, most people thought it was just another POW camp. My uncle knew the only way to find out the truth was to get himself arrested and imprisoned there.”
“Wait. Are you saying he intentionally broke into a Nazi concentration camp?”
“Yes.”
“Was he Jewish?”
“No, he was a Christian. But he was a human being, wasn’t he?”
“And he died in the camp?”
“No. Once he got inside the camp, he organized the resistance movement, and also began writing reports that made their way back to London, detailing the atrocities and trying to convince the Allies to join forces with the Polish underground to liberate the camp. But Churchill and the others didn’t believe him and refused to do it.”
“That sucks. What was Pilecki’s response?”
“He escaped in order to help organize the Polish underground forces to liberate it, but they were too weak to do so, and even though the Russians were close enough to offer military support, they refused to help as well.”
“How long had he been in Auschwitz?”
“Just under three years. Most people didn’t survive six months.”
“And after his escape?”
“He fought in the Warsaw Uprising. Remember, Stalin refused to cross the Vistula to help them, and sixteen thousand Polish fighters were massacred by the Germans so that Russians could take control of Poland after the war.”
“Sounds like the Russians have never been friends to the Polish people, either.”
“My great-uncle would have agreed. He was finally captured by the Germans after the uprising but was liberated from his POW camp by the American Army. He returned home after the war, only to find that the West had given Poland to Russia, and now the Russians were the occupiers. Naturally, my great-uncle had to join the resistance movement against the Soviet Communists, especially after he began to investigate the Katyn Forest massacre.”