27 February 1998
The Origins of our Nation
Moving with the winds of history.
Roman Kolodziejski recalls his childhood memories of the Bolshevik storming of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg in 1917 which started the Bolshevik Revolution.
As a lieutenant of the Polish Army, Red Army soldiers transported him to the Kozielsk internment camp before he managed to escape. After returning to his country he did not want to join Hubal’s detachment. He took part in the conspiracy with the Home Army.
He was assigned to the Polish Army and its assault on Berlin but never reached it…. Instead of becoming a chemist, he became a lawyer. He distinguished himself as a defendant of Radom workers in 1976. He currently serves as a vice president of a local veteran’s union in Radom.
He has a very rich life story which is only one part of his clan’s history. His grandfather Jan Bialek took part in the January Uprising (1864) and later had to hide out in the Swietokrzyskie Mountains. He later returned to Pawlow, had 9 children with Josephine and lived to the reach the age of 84.
Jan Kolodziejski, the father of Roman, together with his wife sought a better life in the far flung Tsarist empire and found himself in St Petersburg just before the outbreak of the First World War. They returned to Poland when the September Revolution occurred.
The children went to school. After completing a teacher’s seminary in 1933, Roman completed additional exams in high school in mathematics and natural sciences as he aspired to study chemistry at the Stefan Batory University in Vilnius. His first year of university was interrupted by the Second World War.
A fragment of an interview with Roman Kolodziejski in the “Slowo Ludu” newspaper.
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