We warmly invite you to watch Part 1 of our interview with Leon Piesowocki, one of the last two living artists-soldiers of the Anders Army. The interview took place as part of our 'Oral History' series.

Leon Piesowocki was born on 9 December 1925 in Poznań. Apart from a year's stay in Berlin, he grew up in Jerzyce. In 1943 - like many young inhabitants of Greater Poland, incorporated into the German Reich as Wartheland - he was drafted into the Wehrmacht. He was sent to France and then to the area around Livorno in Italy.

After deserting to the Allies, he was sent to a Polish transit camp at the II Corps base at Motolla near Taranto. He was later assigned to the Second Counterintelligence [sic!] Branch in the Third Carpathian Rifle Brigade.

After moving with the Anders Army to the UK in 1946, he settled in London, where he was co-initiator and member of the avant-garde Group 49. He then moved to a tiny village near Montelimar, near Lyon. This is where he still lives today.

His works are in the collections of museums in the United Kingdom (London, Bradford), the Netherlands (Amsterdam, Rotterdam), the United States of America (Pittsburg) and in Poland (Warsaw, Poznań, Toruń).

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Film commissioned by the Polonica Institute

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