Papcio Chmiel w 2014 r FOT Forum forum-0428673431
Tytus de Zoo on the barricade
Papcio Chmiel, that is Henryk Jerzy Chmielewski, author of hundreds of cult comic stories in Poland, was most popular for his book about the Warsaw Uprising – ‘Tytus, Romek and A’Tomek as Warsaw Insurgents 1944’. Papcio Chmiel, a soldier in the Home Army, was one of them.
‘The uprising stayed with him forever,’ is how Papcio is remembered by his son, Artur B. Chmielewski. His daughter, Monique Chmielewska-Lehman, remembers that as a little girl, she was often woken at night by her father’s screams. In his dreams, he was still reliving the fear of the occupation.
He joined the underground in the spring of 1943, at the age of less than twenty. Born in the old town of Varsovia, he had been an adventurer since childhood. He was recruited into the Polish underground army by his friend Janusz Mierkowski. They graduated from the Home Army’s Secret Infantry Cadet School and went through field training in the suburbs, but Henryk Chmielewski, alias ‘Jupiter’, was already acquiring scouting skills in secondary school. He and Janusz were assigned to a platoon in the ‘Stachna’ Company of the 3rd Battalion of the 7th Infantry Regiment of the AK, ‘Garłuch’, which referred to the tradition of the 7th Legion Infantry Regiment formed near Warsaw in the spring of 1918. The name ‘Garłuch’, on the other hand, evokes the highest peak not only of the Tatras but of the entire Carpathians. Nowadays we call it Gerlach, but in the past, the Slavic name Garłuch was used for this proud mountain.
In the summer of 1944, the regiment ‘baptised’ with this name numbered more than 2,200 soldiers and officers. On 1 August 1944, a few hours before the ‘W’ hour, ‘Jupiter’ and a few colleagues from ‘Garłuch’ met in Janusz’s flat in the centre of Warsaw, on Wspólna Street. There were seven of them and they had only one pistol. They set off for Ochota, where they expected to pick up grenades at Grójecka Street. The crossing was difficult but successful. With grenades in hand, the insurgents, including ‘Jupiter’, tried to join their platoon. ‘Garłuch’ was ordered to attack the Okęcie airport. Jupiter’ failed to break through the German patrols to join others. He was captured; fortunately, having been convinced beforehand that he would be searched, he got rid of his weapons and insurgent armband. He also saved his life by speaking German quite well.
‘Garłuch was’ bled in a chaotic attack on Okęcie. The airport remained in the hands of the Germans, who ordered Chmielewski and many others captured on the streets of Warsaw to evacuate the equipment that had accumulated there. ‘Jupiter’ escaped only shortly before the surrender of the Uprising. He went into hiding near Warsaw. He returned there in January 1945. He found some of his acquaintances, among them his friend Hanka Śliwińska, whose husband and friend Staszek Kazberuk, also a Home Army soldier, had been killed in the fighting in the Old Town. After five years Hanka married ‘Jupiter’.
In the first decades of communist Poland, the subject of the heroism of the Warsaw insurgents was not officially discussed. Monique and Artur Chmielewski recall that when they were young, in the 1950s and 1960s, their mother would not talk to them about the war at all, but their father would even add special effects to his stories, for example by imitating the sounds of gunshots and explosions and singing insurgent songs.
“Tytus becomes a Scout” volume I. /en.wikipedia.org/wiki
The surviving veterans of ‘Garłuch’ only came out of hiding in 1983. It was then that Papcio Chmiel was awarded the Warsaw Insurgent Cross. He became involved in the community of insurgents close to him. Among them was Jurek Kasprzak of the Grey Regiment, a young boy in the summer of 1944. He belonged to the Scout’s Field Post Office and distributed letters to insurgents and civilians under fire. Years later, Henryk Chmielewski and Jurek met in the editorial office of ‘Świat Młodych’. Jurek worked there as a messenger, while Papcio drew the adventures of three heroes: Tytus de Zoo, a humanised chimpanzee, and Romek and A’Tomek.
‘Jupiter’ designed his regiment’s banner, the cover of a monograph on the regiment and greetings cards for correspondence with colleagues. He also took part in a competition to design a monument to the Warsaw Uprising. He did not win, but he was very happy when it was unveiled in post-communist Poland, on 1 August 1989, on the Plac Krasińskich in Warsaw, near the place where there was a manhole to the sewer, through which several thousand people were evacuated from the collapsing Old Town to Śródmieście and Żoliborz. According to Papcio’s children, their father’s greatest joy and pride was the day the Warsaw Uprising Museum opened on 31 July 2004. Whenever Monique and Artur flew to Warsaw from the United States – where they live permanently – he would take them to this museum, just as he used to take them to the Museum of the Polish Army, to show them one exhibit in particular – the ‘Kubus’ armoured car built by the insurgents in the Powiśle district, which they used in two attacks on the University of Warsaw.
In his book ‘Papcio Chmiel udomowiony’ (Domesticated Papcio Chmiel), Artur recalls: ‘Dad explained exactly what it was made of, what kind of armour it had, what kind of chassis, how it drove, how it shot, what actions it took part in and how the insurgents got in and out.’
This precision in reproducing details was always important in Henryk Chmielewski’s life and artistic work. He believed that this was the way to remain honest, to arrive at the truth, and only then to have the right to communicate it. Papcio did this masterfully, wisely and, when he could afford it, with intelligent wit. His memoirs, recorded for the Oral History Archive of the Warsaw Rising Museum, are based on vivid descriptions, woven from small details and carefully reconstructed words collected from everywhere.
The mural painted by Papcio for this museum is also full of information. On it, Tytus, Romek and A’Tomek commemorate the youngest participants in the battles, who distributed mail, delivered orders and medical supplies, carried out sabotage, prepared meals and even threw petrol bottles at tanks.
A mural depicting Henryk Jerzy Chmielewski on the Henryk Sienkiewicz in Łuków. / pl.wikipedia.org
Papcio Chmiel lived to the hoariness age of 98, but in his final years, with his characteristic sense of humour, he made no secret of his intention to live past 100 and still meet with children and young people to ‘teach by entertaining and entertain by teaching’. The President of the Republic of Poland, Andrzej Duda, posthumously awarded Henryk J. Chmielewski the Order of the White Eagle, the highest state honour.
Karolina Prewęcka
Source: DlaPolonii.pl
