Stanislaw Maczek

On March 31, 2022, it will be 130 years since General Stanislaw Maczek was born (1892). We commemorate this by reflecting on his life on the plot and in the Memorial.

Stanislaw Maczek, a popular commander of the First Polish Armored Division during World War II. He instructed his men to inflict as little material and immaterial damage to villages and towns as possible. In this way Breda was spared a lot of damage when the Polish army liberated the city in October 1944.

He was later stripped of his Polish nationality by the Polish communists. As a result, he was forced to start a new life in Great Britain. Until the 1960s he worked as a bartender in an Edinburgh hotel, now as an employee of one of his military personnel.

Breda granted him honorary citizenship and even offered him a house. Nevertheless, he decided to stay in Scotland. On November 1, 1990, he was appointed lieutenant general in the Polish army by the government of the new Polish Republic. On his 100th birthday, he was awarded the highest Polish decoration: the Order of the White Eagle. He died in 1994, in Scotland, at the age of 102 and was, according to his own wishes, buried in the Polish Cemetery of Honor in Breda.