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Title: Bohdan Kleczyński papers
Date (inclusive): 1939-2009
Collection Number: 2009C43
Contributing Institution: Hoover Institution Library and Archives
Language of Material: In Polish and English
Physical Description:
1 manuscript box, 1 oversize box
(0.8 Linear Feet)
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.
Creator:
Kleczyński, Bohdan, 1902-1944
Physical Location: Hoover Institution Library & Archives
The collection is open for research; materials must be requested in advance via our reservation system. If there are audiovisual
or digital media material in the collection, they must be reformatted before providing access.
For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Acquired by the Hoover Institution Library & Archives in 2009. An increment was added in 2011.
[Identification of item], Bohdan Kleczyński papers, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
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.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
World War, 1939-1945 -- Aerial operations
World War, 1939-1945 -- Poland
World War, 1939-1945 -- Governments in exile
Sikorski, Władysław, 1881-1943
Poland. Polskie Siły Powietrzne