Objects

After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Marek Szwarc, like Jankiel Adller and nearly 85,000 Poles, volunteered for the Polish Army rebuilt in France. In 1940, he was evacuated to Great Britain along with the army. In Scotland, where he was stationed, Marek Szwarc, who was nearly fifty years old at the time, performed mainly on guard duty. From the years of service, there are letters written to his wife and daughters living in London during the war (now in the collection of the POLIN Museum) and drawings. Most of them were donated by his daughter Tereska Torrès to the YIVO Institute for the Jewish Research collection in New York. One of them – a sketch of a group of soldiers engaged in conversation, drawn by Szwarc on 7 September 1942, is in the collection of the POLIN Museum. The soldiers are dressed in British uniforms, the so-called Battle Dress, worn by soldiers of the Polish Army in Great Britain.

Renata Piątkowska