Was the grandson of a family of Polish teachers

Many of who died or disappeared

In the years after the war

He had never visited his homeland

And lived with his mother in Leatherhead

The town of his birth

His father had been killed late in the war

And his mother heavily pregnant with Stephen

Was granted refugee status in England

Stephen Smith was obviously his English name

But he was never told his full Polish name

He knew that he had been christened Zbigniew

But was told to keep his English name

As it would bring him many advantages

Think like an Englishman act like an Englishman

And above all be an Englishman that was all

The war was over he was told

Europe had been liberated

But he saw things differently very differently

And in 1970 visited Poland for the first time

What he found appalled him and he decided

To change the way things worked

But he had not reckoned with Vera

Who he passed in a street in Warszawa

On the 5th of August 1970 at three in the afternoon



to be continued