3.4.1 “When I was seventeen, I fled occupied Poland.”
—Władysław Żegota-Rzegociński, student. Our school, 2017, based on Nasza Szkola, 1998.
When I was seventeen, on 7 December 1939, I fled occupied Poland. I set off from Zakopane to cross the Tatras into Czechoslovakia and then Hungary and Budapest. I arrived in France on 12 January 1940 and, as a student pilot, joined the air force in Lyon-Bron. In February 1940, I joined the First Infantry Division of the Polish Army in Coëtquidan; my Third Group was stationed in Guilliers. In April, I was directed to train as a military observer. In June, under Colonel Popełko’s command, I defended Angers on the front line. On 21 June, I was taken prisoner by the Germans. First interned at Sarzau near the port of Navalo, I was then transported to Germany, to Stalag XI in Fallingbostel, where I was given the internee number 53667. I escaped from this Stalag on 16 February 1941, crossing Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and occupied France to reach free France. From Lyon, I went to Grenoble and then to Villard-de-Lans, where I arrived on 4 March 1941. I stayed in the free zone until September 1943, first in Villard-de-Lans, where I took the baccalaureate at the Polish high school, then in Grenoble, at the Faculty of Law of the Institute of Economics, where I sat the first-year exams and obtained a partial exam certificate. In September 1943, I crossed the Pyrenees and Portugal to Gibraltar and finally England. In England, I became a bomber pilot with the Polish Forces and then the RAF.
Note! In all my papers, from 12 January 1940 until September 1943, when I left France, my date of birth is given as 15 December 1921 and not 15 February 1922, which is my true date of birth. I had to change it so that I could volunteer, because in France they would not accept anyone under eighteen.
