Jerzy Glowczewski, Last of the Polish Fighter Pilots of W.W. II, Dies at 97

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Jerzy Glowczewski, Last of the Polish Fighter Pilots of W.W. II, Dies at 97
By: Nicholas Kulish - The New York Times - 05-14-20
Re: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/o...20Bird%20Brief

He fled Warsaw when the Nazis invaded, flew 100 combat missions, and made a life as an architect in Poland, Egypt and the United States. He died of the coronavirus in New York.

Photo link: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020...y=90&auto=webp
Jerzy Glowczewski in his Spitfire during World War II. He was a Polish pilot who fought with the Allies as part of the No. 308 “City of Krakow” Polish fighter squadron.Credit...via Klara Glowczewska

This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.

They were men without a country, flying combat missions against the same Nazi war machine that had overwhelmed their native Poland in the Blitzkrieg. Their uncommon valor during World War II made the Polish pilots fighting for the Allies into an example of determination in the face of adversity.

Jerzy Glowczewski, 97, flew 100 missions for the No. 308 “City of Krakow” Polish fighter squadron, according to Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance. He was widely believed to have been the last surviving member of the valiant brotherhood of exiles who fought with the Royal Air Force when he died on April 13 of Covid-19 in a nursing home in Manhattan.

On New Year’s Day in 1945, Mr. Glowczewski helped turn back the final major offensive on the Western front by the German Luftwaffe, shooting down a Focke-Wulf 190 over Belgium from his Spitfire fighter plane. “As I looked over my shoulder, the Focke-Wulf was a crumbling crucifix against the bright, morning sky. Another explosion, it tumbled down,” he wrote in his memoirs.

“It was probably one of the last classic dogfights in which survival depended on the acrobatic skill and lightning reflexes of the pilot,” he added.

Jerzy Eligiusz Glowczewski was born on Nov. 19, 1922, in Warsaw. His father owned a lithographic printing company and died in a car accident when Jerzy was 6; his mother, Jozefa, took over the business. A rebellious child, he was sent to a strict Jesuit-run school for what he called “problem boys.”

He was 16 when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939 and his life turned into something out of the pages of an Alan Furst World War II-era spy novel. He escaped Warsaw with his stepfather and was nearly killed in a strafing run by a German plane as they tried to join the remnants of the Polish army. As refugees they lived in Bucharest and then in Tel Aviv.

Mr. Glowczewski served with the Allies in the Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade in Egypt and on the front lines in Libya before traveling to Britain to train as a pilot.

He returned to war-shattered Poland after the German surrender and enrolled at the Warsaw University of Technology’s faculty of architecture, graduating in 1952. As an architect, he worked on the reconstruction of the Polish capital’s badly damaged old town and designed several industrial projects around the country. He married Irena (known as Lenta) Henisz and they had a daughter, Klara Glowczewska.

In 1961 he visited the United States on a Ford Foundation grant, which led to a teaching position at North Carolina State University. He lived in Egypt for two years starting in 1965 when he directed the project for the redevelopment of Aswan, under the aegis of the Ford Foundation, as the Soviets were building the massive Aswan High Dam. In Cairo he struck up a friendship with a local professor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who later became secretary-general of the United Nations.

Mr. Glowczewski had to flee Egypt in 1967 as the war with Israel broke out, leaving with his wife, daughter and their dachshund, Romulus. In his later years he taught at the Pratt Institute in New York and wrote his memoirs, which were published in three volumes in Polish and translated and released in English in a single volume, “The Accidental Immigrant” (2007).

Along with his daughter, he is survived by two grandchildren. Ms. Glowczewska said that her father thought of himself first and foremost as an architect and was surprised by the attention his wartime service received late in life.

In his memoir, Mr. Glowczewski wrote about a stopover in Istanbul after fleeing the Gestapo in Bucharest. “We sometimes pondered how serendipitous our lives as refugees have been since we have left home,” he wrote. “We neither dwelled on the past nor anticipated the future.”

About this writer: Nicholas Kulish is an enterprise reporter covering immigration issues.

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Personal note: The Pandemic strikes again. In behalf of the PatriotFiles member's we send our respects to this WWII War Hero Officer Glowczewski Family & Friends and we thank him and all his comrades for their service during WWII.

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