This July marks the 62nd anniversary of the tragic death of General Władysław Sikorski, Chief Commander of Poland and Prime Minister of the Polish Government-in-Exile. It is a special anniversary. General Sikorski was 62 years old when he died as a soldier on July 4, 1943. His visit in the Gibraltar fortress on the way from Cairo to London ended tragically in mysterious circumstances, unexplained to the present day.

Lieutenant Ludwik Lubienski, the Chief of the Polish Military Mission in Gibraltar, was an eyewitness of the events connected with General Sikorski’s death [7]. According to Łubieński, on Sunday, July 4, 1943, about 7 a.m., Russian Ambassador Ivan Maisky flew to Gibraltar, and after a meeting with the British governor of the territory, Mason-MacFarlane, flew to Cairo, and then to Moscow to report on his diplomatic efforts.

A more detailed report on his journey is given by Maisky himself [8, p. 369-371]. According to his memories from 1965, his plane left England on July 3, around midnight, to land on Gibraltar on in the morning of July 4. At midday his Liberator took to the air and proceeded eastward to continue the journey. Usually, a plane flying from Gibraltar to Cairo had one landing stage at the aerodrome of Castel-Benito, near Tripoli, but that time it went a little farther. Maisky’s plane landed at a military airport in the desert around 6 p.m. on July 4, 1943.

According to Maisky, his plane was to leave around midnight and reach Cairo on July 6, at 7 a.m., but this seems to be not credible. The route from the military airport to Cairo would take around 31 hours, which is technically unreliable. His story seems to be suspicious. It is also possible that Maisky left Gibraltar not on Sunday, July 4, but Monday morning, July 5.
Even more improbable is Maisky’s explanation of the reason for the landing, not at Castel-Benito, but at the aerodrome in the Libyan Desert. According to Maisky, Sikorski’s plane departed on the morning of July 5 from Cairo and the ambassador himself had left Gibraltar by that time. This way he admits that he left Gibraltar not at noon on Sunday, but on the morning of Monday, July 5 [8, p. 371]. It was obvious why Maisky’s plane didn’t land at Castel-Benito. At that time Polish government didn’t have diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia, and the British, afraid of further „misunderstandings”, decided to prevent Maisky from meeting Sikorski, and designated two different airports for them to land. So to hide the truth, Ivan Maisky had to say that General Sikorski wasn’t present in Gibraltar on July 4 as he was in Cairo until July 5. Unfortunately, that kind of miracle never happened. This is proof that Ambassador Maisky was shuffling.
According to Lieutenant Łubieński, during the night of July 3, courier Jan Gralewski came to Gibraltar from Warsaw “with many coded reports from the Commanding Officer of the Polish Underground Army”. General Sikorski was supposed to meet Gralewski right after 11 a.m. During the meeting Sikorski was to decide whether Gralewski would fly with him to London on that day. Then, at 1 p.m., General Sikorski inspected the Somerset Light Infantry. At 2:45 p.m., he met a group of 95 Polish soldiers evacuated from Spain, waiting to be transported to the United Kingdom. As Tadeusz Kisielewski recalls, the group contained at least 20 intelligence officers, who came from the Near East or Algeria [6]. Then, according to Lieutenant Łubieński, after a short rest, General Sikorski, together with British Minister of War, Sir James Grigg, visited the Gibraltar fortress. Sikorski came back to his apartment and at 6 p.m. participated in a cocktail party organized to celebrate the 167th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of the U.S.A. As Łubieński describes, General Sikorski’s plane took off at 11 p.m. When the plane was taking off, one of the mailbags that were on board slipped out, as it was probably close to the opened hatch [6]. After it reached a certain height, the lieutenant noticed that the dwindling navigation lights of the Liberator had stopped climbing. Slowly they began to drop. The plane flew, on an even keel and apparently intact, into the sea at an angle of about 10 degrees. The engines stopped suddenly. The plane crashed into the water about 3/4 of a mile from the shore. Nobody except the pilot survived. According to Lieutenant Łubieński, the body of Zofia Leśniowska, the General’s daughter, was never found. This may imply that, in unknown circumstances, she managed to stay alive.
This is how General Sikorski’s friend Karol Popiel, Polish parliament deputy in 1922-1927, one of the most prominent Front Morges members and a member of General Sikorski’s government, describes the Gibraltar catastrophe in his book [10, p. 190]: “One thing is sure for me beyond any doubts: General Sikorski’s death wasn’t an accident. It was planned and it was supposed to happen on his way to the Near East. That plan wasn’t fulfilled, but it succeeded six weeks later.”
There are facts that prove that Lieutenant Łubieński’s description the events accompanying the death of General Sikorski was not truthful. After Łubieński died, his daughter Rula Leńska, a well-known in England actress, said in one of her interviews: “I’ve got a feeling that my daddy was buried keeping a big secret in his heart“ [2, s.43]. Gralewski’s wife, Alicja Iwańska, in 1982 published his so-called letter-fragments [3]. On July 4th, 1943, at 6 p.m., Gralewski wrote [3, s. 198]: “Well, this phase is ending and it ends unexpectedly impressively. Tonight I’m leaving Gibraltar. I’m afraid the older gentleman [Sikorski] will tell me off for my conversation in Madrid. But I’ll defend myself. Moreover, there are high hopes for a bright future... only a little bit... it’s close… I can hardly write, too many feelings, too many thoughts. Finally I‘ve reached that stage of intensity of life that it makes insight impossible. Maybe later, perhaps in the future – and it will be a hundred times more exciting – I’ll be able to describe what’s happening today.” Nothing indicates that the real Jan Gralewski met General Sikorski on that day. Gralewski would describe his meeting with Sikorski. It was somebody else. It is obvious that Lieutenant Łubieński, introducing somebody else to Sikorski, was aware of the mystification. In the book mentioned above, Alicja Iwańska recalls her conversation with Władysław Tatarkiewicz, a professor and long time friend of her husband, who in his 1945 book “Remembering Past Philosophers, 1939-45” would write that: “Jan Gralewski died in the Gibraltar catastrophe together with General Sikorski”[3, s.6]. Iwańska disagreed, saying that: “(…) every death is a private death of an individual, and any attempt to bind Gralewski with Sikorski, either for sensational or prestigious reasons, would take his own death away from him.” Her statement leads to the conclusion that Jan Gralewski wasn’t killed in the plane crash, but died in a different way.

Czesław Szafran, in an article dedicated to controversies surrounding the Gibraltar catastrophe, noticed that among the reasons why it can’t be proven that General Sikorski’s death wasn’t accidental are the difficulties in identifying the way Jan Gralewski died [11, p. 245]. Eugeniusz Niebelski thinks that Gralewski’s body was found on the runway, but he doesn’t give the source of that information [9, p. 177]. The same was stated by Tadeusz Kisielewski. Alicja Iwańska in the autobiographical novel called “Niezdemobilizowani” (Not Demobilized), in which her husband bears the moniker Marek, wrote: “It was so-called luck, that Marek did not struggle a lot; as they say, death from a bullet is easy: a sharp pain and a brief moment of consciousness.” [4, p.85]
From the documents of Jan Gralewski’s file in the Polish Institute and Museum of General Sikorski [1], we learn that he came with Bolesław Kozłowski to Gibraltar on June 23, 1943. These names are on the list of passengers of the British cruiser „Carnival” and a battleship from Villa Real to St. Antonio to Gibraltar. In remarks on that list it says Jan Gralewski left under the name of Jerzy Nowakowski, and Bolesław Kozłowski left under the name of Wiktor Suchy. The same kind of list, from the same ships, but dated on July 23, 1943, contains the names of Wiktor Suchy and Jerzy Nowakowski. In remarks on that list it is stated that Wiktor Suchy left under the name of Bolesław Kozłowski, and Jerzy Nowakowski left as Paweł Pańkowski.

The passengers’ list from June 23, 1943, contains the name of Pantaleon Drzewicki, who left as Chaim Janowski, while the July 23 list has the name of Stanisław Izdebski, who left as Pantaleon Drzewicki. Tadeusz Kisielewski, in his article, mentioned Stanisław Izdebski as a supposed emissary of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), “who left Warsaw on March 28 and appeared in Gibraltar on June 24.” The author also brings up Józef Dunin-Borkowski as a supposed courier from Skarżysko-Kamienna. The list of passengers from June 23 also contains a lance corporal Wojciechowski, who left for Gibraltar under the name of Józef Dunin-Borkowski. The names of all people who came to Gibraltar and their pseudonyms were put on the list according to a certain plan. This plan made it possible for different persons who were not necessarily on the lists to use the same names. The appearance of the same names on the lists from June 23 and July 23 might have been caused by the investigation of General Sikorski’s death.

Jan Gralewski became a foreign courier on October 25, 1942, and started passing through to France [3, p. 168]. He went there for the first time in late November 1942 and came back before Christmas [5, p. 224]. His wife, Alicja Iwańska, was already working for an underground organization “Łza – 24”, taking care of couriers traveling to France [3, p. 169-170]. At the beginning of January 1943, Gralewski left on another courier’s journey. His wife’s task was to take care of the couriers getting ready for a journey and coming back from it. She didn’t help Gralewski as it was against the rules of conspiracy. Iwańska was also providing couriers’ families with money during the time they were on the mission.

By the end of January 1943, Gralewski came back from the assignment only to leave on February 8 under the pseudonym Pankracy for his last mission from Poland. The Polish Underground State sent him to establish the track to Spain for couriers. While Gralewski was away, Alicja Iwańska was taking care of Bolesław, another foreign courier much older than her husband [5, p. 228]. That Bolesław might have been Bolesław Kozłowski. In a conversation with a Polish Home Army courier, Alicja Iwańska learned that Gralewski, after a failed attempt to get from Paris to Vichy, was redirected to get to Spain through the Pyrenees [3, p. 171]. On May 27, 1943, Jan Gralewski was taken to Miranda del Ebro, a Spanish concentration camp [3, p. 186]. He was hoping to be there for only 2 weeks, but he stayed in Miranda del Ebro until June 23 – the day he came to Gibraltar. As Alicja Iwańska states, most probably Gralewski left the camp thanks to the British [3, p. 171]. He wasn’t well-oriented in his plans as he wrote in a so-called letter-fragment to his wife dated June 30:”Tomorrow we’re going to be shipped to England”.

The tragic fate of Jan Gralewski is probably a key to solving the mystery of General Władysław Sikorski’s death. Tadeusz Kisielewski, in the article titled “The mystery of the tragedy in Gibraltar,” mentions the rumor noted by Rev. Antoni Frugała in August 1943, about a secret order “telling every Polish officer to shoot Wiktor Suchy, Polish Armed Forces officer”[6]. Unfortunately, the author didn’t reveal the source of this information.

Bibliography:
1. Archiwum Instytutu Polskiego i Muzeum im. gen. Sikorski, Londyn, Archives Ref. No A.XII. 4/172.
2. Bzowska Katarzyna, Jedna noc w Gibraltarze, "Nowy Dziennik", New York, July 4-6, 2003, p. 42-43.
3. Iwańska Alicja, Gralewski Jan, Wojenne Odcinki, Warszawa 1940 - 1943, Oficyna Poetów i Malarzy, London 1982.
4. Iwańska Alicja, Niezdemobilizowani, Poznań - Warszawa 1945-46, Polska Fundacja Kulturalna, London 1988.
5. Iwańska Alicja, Potyczki i Przymierza, Pamiętnik 1918 - 1985, Gebethner i Ska, Warszawa 1993.
6. Kisielewski Tadeusz A., Tajemnice tragedii w Gibraltarze, Cz. I. "Mówią Wieki" 2001, nr 12, s.23-28: Cz. II „Mówią Wieki” 2002, nr 1, p. 23-27.
7. Łubieński Ludwik, The last days of General Sikorski: an eyewitness account, in: Sword Keith (editor), Sikorski: Soldier and Statesman, A Collection of Essays, Orbis Books (London) Ltd., London 1990.
8. Maisky Ivan, Memoirs of a Soviet Ambassador, The War: 1939-43, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1968.
9. Niebelski Eugeniusz, Dobrze zasłużony Ojczyźnie. W 120 rocznicę urodzin generała Władysława Sikorski, "Rocznik Mielecki" 2001, t. IV.
10. Popiel Karol, Generał Sikorski w mojej pamięci, Odnowa, London 1978.
11. Szafran Czesław, Kontrowersje wokół katastrofy gibraltarskiej, w: Moszumański Zbigniew, Zuziak Janusz (red.), Generał Władysław Sikorski, Szkice historyczne w 60. rocznicę śmierci, Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek, Toruń 2004.