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Overview of the Bohdan Kleczyński papers, 1939-2009
2009C43
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Title: Bohdan Kleczyński papers
Dates: 1939-2009
Collection Number: 2009C43
Creator: Kleczyński, Bohdan, 1902-1944
Collection Size:
1 manuscript box, 1 oversize box
(0.8 linear feet)
Repository:
Hoover Institution Archives
Stanford, California 94305-6010
Abstract: Diary, letters, military and personal identification documents, printed matter, and photographs, relating to an alleged assassination
attempt on General Wladyslaw Sikorski, prime minister of the Polish government-in-exile, in 1942, and to Polish air operations
during World War II. Includes posthumous collected material.
Physical Location: Hoover Institution Archives
Languages:
English
Polish
Collection is open for research.
The Hoover Institution Archives only allows access to
copies of audiovisual items. To listen to sound recordings or to view videos or films during your visit, please contact the Archives
at least two working days before your arrival. We will then advise you of the accessibility of the material you wish to see
or hear. Please note that not all audiovisual material is immediately accessible.
For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Archives.
[Identification of item], Bohdan Kleczyński papers, [Box number], Hoover Institution Archives.
Acquired by the Hoover Institution Archives in 2009. An increment was added in 2011.
Materials may have been added to the collection since this finding aid was prepared. To determine if this has occurred, find
the collection in Stanford University's online catalog Socrates at
http://library.stanford.edu/webcat . Materials have been added to the collection if the number of boxes listed in Socrates is larger than the number of boxes
listed in this finding aid.
Wing commander, Polish air force.
Despite wounds suffered in September 1939, Kleczynski made his way to the Polish forces in Allied France. A few months later,
he and his comrades witnessed the collapse of France; evading advancing Germans they boarded a British coal ship in the southwest
of France, arriving in Liverpool a week later. In England, Lieutenant Colonel Bohdan Kleczynski was given command of the Polish
305 bomber squadron, named after Marshal Jozef Pilsudski. Wounded again during a raid over Cologne, Kleczynski was appointed
air attaché in the Polish embassy in Washington. After a few months in the United States, Kleczynski returned to Britain.
Hurting both physically and emotionally, Kleczynski, no longer able to fly, spent the final months of his life lecturing in
the Polish Air Force Academy in Scotland. He died in March 1944, at the age of forty-one.
Scope and Content of Collection
Diary, letters, military and personal identification documents, printed matter, and photographs, relating to an alleged assassination
attempt on General Wladyslaw Sikorski, prime minister of the Polish government-in-exile, in 1942, and to Polish air operations
during World War II. Includes posthumous collected material.
The Kleczynski diary, which covers the period September 1940 through March 1943 and is handwritten, is in the form of long,
melancholic letters to his beloved wife, Helena, who remained in German-occupied Poland and thus was unable to read the diary
until long after her husband's death. The photo album details life in the 305 bomber squadron, with several photographs from
the French episode of the Polish pilot's saga.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
Sikorski, Wladyslaw, 1881-1943.
Poland. Polskie Sily Powietrzne.
World War, 1939-1945--Poland.
World War, 1939-1945--Governments in exile.
World War, 1939-1945--Aerial operations.