On December 11th, 1994, General Stanisław Maczek (second from the right) died. Commander of the 1st Polish Armored Division, famous for fighting at the 'Falaise Pocket' after the invasion of the Allied forces in Normandy in 1944 and the liberation of the Dutch city of Breda.
General Stanisław Maczek was a Polish tank commander, whose division was instrumental in the Allied liberation of France, closing the Falaise pocket, resulting in the destruction of 14 German Wehrmacht and SS divisions. A veteran of World War I, the Polish-Ukrainian and Polish–Soviet Wars, Maczek was the commander of Poland's only major armoured formation during the September 1939 campaign, and later commanded a Polish armoured formation in France in 1940. He was the commander of the famous 1st Polish Armoured Division, and later of the I Polish Army Corps under Allied Command in 1942–45.
Maczek's Division spearheaded the Allied drive across the battlefields of northern France, Belgium, the Netherlands and finally Germany. During its progress it liberated Ypres, Oostnieuwkerke, Roeselare, Tielt, Ruislede and Ghent in Belgium. (Coincidentally, the Polish word maczek means "poppy" in English, the symbol of remembrance associated with the area around Ypres in the First World War.) Thanks to an outflanking manoeuvre, it proved possible to free Breda in the Netherlands after a hard fight but without incurring losses in the town's population. A petition on behalf of 40,000 inhabitants of Breda resulted in Maczek being made an honorary Dutch citizen after the war.
After the war, Maczek was stripped of Polish citizenship by the Communist government of the People's Republic of Poland, and thus had to remain in Britain. He left the army on 9 September 1948 but was for some reason denied a general's pension by the British government. As a result, Maczek worked as a bartender at an Edinburgh hotel until the 1960s.
Although living in the United Kingdom, General Stanisław Maczek had a strong connection to the Netherlands. Besides being a regional hero to the areas he liberated in World War II, he was awarded honorary citizenship of the city of Breda. Recently acquired archive documents show that the Polish general secretly received a yearly allowance from the Dutch government, for the rest of his life. He got his allowance, because Mayor Claudius Prinsen of Breda was worried in 1950, after receiving information that Maczek was in a 'difficult financial situation'. The Polish general was doing unskilled labor to make ends meet. He also had to take care of a chronically ill daughter who needed costly treatment.
The mayor of Breda informed the Dutch national government that a war hero was in financial need. He made an appeal to the government to help the man that liberated the Netherlands. The Dutch government decided quickly and awarded Maczek an indexed general's pension, which was paid for by the Ministry of Foreign affairs from a secret budget. The Dutch government did not want this to be made public, due to its sensitive nature. In the Cold War period, announcing that the Dutch were paying a non-communist Polish ex-general, would certainly strain diplomatic relations with the communist Polish government and the Soviet Union. Not to mention, it would confront the British government with a not so proud moment in their history. Uninformed about his improved financial situation, the Dutch public responded at once in 1965 when news came that his chronically ill daughter needed costly medical treatment in Spain. The Dutch population raised a substantial amount of money following a national radio broadcast for the Maczek family, helping out the general that liberated them.
In 1989, the last Polish Communist Government of Prime Minister Mieczysław Rakowski issued a public apology to the General, and in 1994 he was presented with Poland's highest state decoration, the Order of the White Eagle.
Lieutenant General Stanisław Maczek died on 11 December 1994, at the age of 102. According to his last wish, he was laid to rest among his soldiers at the Polish military cemetery in Breda, the Netherlands. Each year during Liberation Day festivities, Breda is visited by a large Polish contingent and the city devotes part of the festivities to the fallen Polish soldiers.
