Contribution to the history of the Polish Navy during World War II combined with the history of the Polish diaspora in Turkey

Abstract

The content of the article oscillates around the fate of a Pole, Zbigniew Księżopolski, born in Adampol in Turkey, who decided to become an officer of the Polish Navy. He left for Poland in 1937, where he studied at the Naval Cadet School in Toruń until the outbreak of the war in 1939. Then he fought in the Polish campaign of 1939, he was taken prisoner, got wounded, and happily returned to Turkey after several surgeries. There, after his return, he tried to continue fighting in the Polish Army. He reached the Polish Army first in the Middle East, then in England, and again served in the Polish Navy until 1946. The history of the Polish officer was presented by the Polish-Turkish relations in Adampol near Istanbul, where the Polish diaspora, which cultivates patriotic traditions and the memory of its roots, has lived from 1842 to the present day. Their motto is a message for the next generations of Poles born there, which is: “We are in a strange situation, Homeland of our other fathers, Is located on the Vistula River, But the homeland of our closer fathers, It is Adampol on the Bosphorus. Perhaps I said it wrong, Poland is our homeland with its traditions on the Turkish land.”