Early life to 1945 Andrew Ciechanowiecki was born in
Warsaw in 1924, the only child of Jerzy Stanisław Ciechanowiecki, a Polish diplomat, and Matilda, "Tilly", née Countess Osiecimska-Hutten-Czapska, a prominent figure in the élite social circles of pre-war
Warsaw. On his father's side, he came from an impoverished
Masovian noble and senatorial family, established in
Belarus, and who had recently lost their landed estates as a result of the
Treaty of Riga (1921). He had spent his early childhood in
Budapest, where his father died at the early age of 37 while working at the Polish embassy, obliging the family to return to Warsaw. There he attended the
Mikołaj Rey Primary School followed by the
Stefan Batory Gimnazjum & Liceum. The household came to be dominated by his widowed mother and maternal grandmother and their social connections.
Ciechanowiecki's war , watercolour by
Napoleon Orda 1864 The
German invasion of Poland began on 1 September 1939. On the advice of the British general, Sir
Adrian Carton de Wiart, resident in Poland, on 5 September, the family fled East to
Mołodów, on the estate of Henryk Skirmunt and his sister, Maria, the younger siblings of
Konstanty Skirmunt, Polish ambassador in
London (1919–1934). The plan had been to overwinter there and that Ciechanowiecki should attend school in nearby
Pinsk. On 17 September invading
Soviet units laid siege to the small town. Elements of local
Belarusian activists presented an ultimatum to the Skirmunts: that the 150 Polish military police stationed on their estate should lay down their arms or all the buildings would be set alight. The unworldly Skirmunts fell for the trap; the police were all shot with their own weapons, the elderly Skirmunts were slaughtered in the woods and the premises were looted. Ciechanowiecki and his family managed to flee with the retreating Polish columns of general
Franciszek Kleeberg. They travelled via
Kamien Koszyrski to
Kowel, then by train, on to
Lwów. In December they failed to cross the
Green frontier into Romania. They left the city in March 1940, just two days ahead of the
KGB's arrival to start mass
deportations. Recrossing the new
frontier, they finally returned to Warsaw in early May 1940. Back at his old school, he obtained his
baccalauréat in 1942 through "clandestine classes",
Komplety, together with classmates later to become "luminaries" of Polish higher education such as, Professors:
Jerzy Kroh, J.A. Miłobędzki, J. Pelc and K. Szaniawski. The class was later dubbed the "professorial cohort"; of the group, only Ciechanowiecki did not become a professor, he later quipped. After leaving school he had to look for paid employment, did some charity work and enrolled on a degree course at the school of Professor
Edward Lipiński, an underground version of the earlier
SGH. To "distract" himself from difficult wartime conditions he decided to join an Art History course at the
Uniwersytet Ziem Zachodnich (Western University) unaware of how portentous it would become. It enabled him to attend the lectures of professor
Tatarkiewicz "on themes like happiness, in the light of a
Carbide lamp in a chilly suburban room." In between these many courses, he attended
Home Army training classes for cadets. At some stage, he became secretary to the politician,
Adam Ronikier, an interlocutor with the German high command in occupied Warsaw. Presumably, he remained in that position for the 63-day duration of the
Warsaw Uprising that erupted on 1 August 1944. After the collapse of the Warsaw Uprising and the conclusion of hostilities on 5 October, he did not leave the battered capital with the columns of captive Home Army fighters nor with the destitute civilian population. He left ten days later with the
Red Cross. By his own account, he visited
Pruszków, the vast German holding camp for
POWs and "went on Home Army missions in the provinces". He went to Kraków, where he was briefly arrested by the Germans, and then released. Such circumstances were extraordinary for a young intelligent man of his age at that time, who was likely to have been a resistance member and therefore a suspect, unless he had "special protection". His bid to travel with Ronikier was refused and by the end of January 1945, he was back in Warsaw. His claim to have worked for a short spell with the anti-communist
Freedom and Independence organisation, (Wolność i Niezawisłość), until the spring of 1945 does not stand up since it was not founded till September of that year.
Polish People's Republic Having decided not to escape to the West, in June 1945 he applied to the newly installed government of the
People’s Republic of Poland to join the
Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Because of his knowledge of several languages, aged just 21, he was employed in the rank of Counsellor. He was assigned as Chief of Protocol to the Ministry of Shipping & Foreign Trade. In that capacity, he participated in numerous negotiations with foreign delegations in Warsaw. In August 1945 he was a member of the Polish Delegation, as its interpreter, to the
UNRRA Conference held in
London. In the autumn of that year, he was appointed counsellor to the embassy in
the Hague, but that appointment was cancelled for political reasons, due to his origins and his alleged Home Army past. He returned to
Kraków to complete his studies – firstly at the Academy of Economics, obtaining his degree in 1947 and then in the Faculty of History of Art of the
Jagiellonian University, gaining his Master of Arts degree in March 1950. At the same time, he was involved in student activities and was the founder of the
Club of the Logophagoi, (Klub Logofagów), a debating society which comprised many prominent students and young scholars – some eminent politicians and scholars were to emerge from its ranks. The club was also the prototype for later clubs of the
Catholic intelligentsia, which was preparing for the fall of Communism.
Imprisonment Having completed his studies, he was almost immediately appointed lecturer at the Institute of History of Art. Work on his doctoral thesis was interrupted by his arrest on 22 October 1950. Transported immediately to Warsaw in connection with the staged "British Embassy"
Show trial and after lengthy interrogations, he was sentenced to ten years in prison in February 1952 for allegedly helping British and Vatican spies, as well as for extending his underground activities beyond the official date for disclosure, which, in any case, would probably have led to an earlier arrest. He spent five years and four months in prison in difficult conditions – firstly on remand in the cellars of the
Ministry of Public Security in Koszykowa Street, and later in the infamous
Mokotów Prison, both in Warsaw, and finally – after sentencing – in the prisons of
Rawicz and
Wronki. In the latter two he actively organised spiritual help for his fellow prisoners. Having got himself work in the prison hospital, he was instrumental in forging documents enabling the early release of a very large number of political prisoners. He himself was released on 6 March 1956 less than midway through his sentence. He was later cleared of all charges, probably in exchange for becoming an informer, especially on foreign trips.
Academic pursuits Returning to Kraków, he took up his doctoral thesis and also worked on other research projects. He was a consultant at the
Wawel Castle Museum and also a curator at the Castle Museum in
Łańcut. His academic interests concentrated on the history of furniture and later on Kraków
Baroque silver, as well as on the culture of the former
Commonwealth of Poland. In 1958 he won a travel scholarship from the
Ford Foundation and the
British Council, leaving the country on 22 July of that year, presumably, not thinking that it would mean a 19-year break with his homeland. He did, however, take the precaution of bringing with him all his materials relating to his research, the subject of his doctoral thesis. Later he completed another thesis at
University of Tübingen, Germany. ==Activities in the West==