Sergiusz Piasecki, writer, armed robber, smuggler, brave resistance fighter, spent his last years in Hastings

Below, taken mainly from Wikipedia, is Sergiusz Piasecki's biography. In his last years, he lived with my friend Bogdan Lubowiecki, who, like so many Polish airmen and soldiers, had ended up in England after the war. When I visited Bogdan, we sat in Sergiusz's room. The youtube link below shows the room about halfway through the clip, which is in Polish.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JSF7rEEtnc

We went to look for Sergiusz's grave in Hastings cemetery. It was easy to recognize because someone had left Polish grave candles on it. May Sergiusz rest in peace.

Sergiusz Piasecki was born on April 1, 1901 (or June 1, 1899 -  he changed his name sometimes and birthdate once in order to mislead the authorities in Belarus. He was the illegitimate son of Michal Piasecki and Klaudia Kukalowicz, a servant working for the Piasecki family, whom Sergiusz never met. According to his own life story, he was looked after by stepmother Filomena Gruszewska, who openly disliked him. His childhood was very difficult also, because children at school mocked his Polish roots. Piasecki hated the Russian school and armed with a pistol attacked the teacher. He was sent to prison, but escaped.

He saw with his own eyes the barbarity of the Bolshevik revolution, and from then on, became an avid anti-Communist. Sometime in 1918 or 1919, he returned to Belarus, joining the Belarusian anti-Soviet units. He was transferred to cadet school in Warsaw. In the summer of 1920, Piasecki fought in the Battle of Radzymin. Afterwards, he was asked to join Polish intelligence as his language skills (he spoke Russian and Belarussian fluently) were highly regarded.

In the early 1920s, Piasecki skillfully organized a whole web of Polish agents in Belarus. His supervisors were very pleased with his work, but they did not have enough money to cover all the expenses incurred by Piasecki and the growing number of his men. So he found another source of income – smuggling. He did this partly because foreign spies were executed by the Soviets, while smugglers were only incarcerated for a few years. He smuggled cocaine to the USSR and took furs back to Poland. He needed the money to bribe the Soviet prison guards, as his men were frequently caught and incarcerated.

In February 1926, Piasecki was fired from Polish intelligence. He had nothing but a revolver. He robbed a train near Vilnius and was put in jail and sentenced to death.

Fortunately, his former supervisors from intelligence did not forget about their agent, and so instead of being executed, Piasecki ended up with 15 years behind bars. His stay prison was short. He started a riot and was transferred to the hardest prison in Poland, near Kielce.He got tuberculosis there.

Like other prisoners, he started writing in prison. He learned polish from a grammar book, the Bible etc. A journalist helped him publish Kochanek Wielkiej Niedzwiedzicy.Thebook sold out within a month, it was the third most popular publication of interwar Poland.

In 1937, he was pardoned. The day of his release was sensational, crowds of journalists were waiting at a gate, and Piasecki himself was shocked at technical novelties, such as radio, which had become common since 1926. In late 1937 and early 1938, Piasecki went to Zakopane, to recuperate.

In the summer of 1939 Piasecki went to Vilnius, where he stayed duringthe invasion of Poland in World War II. In September 1939, he volunteered to fight the Soviets. After the capitulation of Poland, he was offered a chance to move to France, but refused and decided to stay in his occupied homeland. He cooperated with the Polish resistance, and in 1943 became an executioner, carrying out capital punishment sentences handed down by underground Polish courts. His wartime noms de guerre "Sucz", "Kira" and "Konrad". Later, he wrote two books about his war activities – The Tower of Babel and  Adam and Eve. Among those who he was ordered to execute, was Jozef Mackiewicz, falsely accused of cooperating with the Germans. Piasecki refused to kill him, and later it was revealed that Mackiewicz's accusations had been made up by the Soviets.

After the war, Piasecki hid from the secret police for a year inside Poland. In April 1946, he escaped to Italy, where he spotted the Italian translation of his own Kochanek Wielkiej Niedzwiedzicy. Soon, he got in touch with Polish writers living in exile. In 1947, Piasecki moved to England. He lived in Hastings at 11 Hill Street. His name can be found on a resolution of the Union of Polish Writers in Exile, which urged all concerned to stop publishing in the Communist-occupied country. He once publicly declared that he would gladly take any job that would result in erasing Communism.

Living abroad, Piasecki did not stop writing. In the late 1940s he came to the conclusion that humour is the best weapon to fight the Communists. So, he wrote a satire The memoirs of a Red Army officer, which presents a made-up diary of Mishka Zubov – a Red Army officer who, together with his unit, enters Poland on September 17, 1939. Zubov claims in his "diary" that his only purpose is to kill all the bourgeoisie who possess watches and bicycles. Piasecki became fluent in Polish as an adult. Sergiusz Piasecki died from cancer in a London hospital in 1964 in London at the age of 65. His grave is in Hastings cemetery.