My buddy Jan Mokrzycki, who has died aged 91, was the progressive president of the Federation of Poles in Nice Britain for 10 years. He campaigned for the nation’s entry into the EU and for the rights of Polish individuals within the UK as soon as that had been achieved. By way of the strain group Poland Comes Residence, which Jan co-founded in 1995, he persuaded British politicians and enterprise of the necessity for Poland to hitch the European group.
In 2000, Jan wrote a letter to every of the 600 or so British MPs, urging them to help the signing of the Good treaty, which might pave the best way for EU entry. The then overseas secretary Robin Prepare dinner quoted approvingly from Jan’s letter through the subsequent parliamentary debate.
After Poland’s accession to the EU in 2004, Jan concerned British commerce unions in a recruitment of Poles into their ranks, arrange a unit monitoring hate crimes and launched a handbook, Reside and Work in the UK (2005), to assist newly arrived Poles.
In 2004 he initiated a profitable marketing campaign towards the misguided time period “Polish focus camp” that had been used within the British media to explain Nazi camps arrange in his native nation. He was additionally concerned in negotiations with the German authorities to increase the suitable of British Poles to obtain compensation as wartime victims of compelled labour in Germany.
Born in Warsaw, to Janina (nee Sekowska) and Jan Mokrzycki, each medical doctors, he endured the German occupation from the outbreak of the second world struggle. His father, uncle and grandfather have been all executed for being members of Żegota, a resistance organisation that saved Jewish lives, and his mom interned in Auschwitz, then Ravensbrück, focus camps for a similar cause. Jan survived the struggle residing along with his grandmother, till, in 1946, his mom, launched from Ravensbrück, smuggled him in another country to Britain.
Initially he boarded with an English household, the Walkers, in Bolton, whereas his mom discovered work as a health care provider earlier than becoming a member of him within the Lancashire city. He was taken to his first soccer sport by Mr Walker, and thereafter grew to become a lifelong Bolton Wanderers fan.
After education in Bolton, Jan went to Newcastle College to review dentistry, qualifying in 1959. The next yr he married Magdalena Okonska, a survivor of wartime deportation to Siberia, and the couple settled in Kenilworth, Warwickshire.
There he grew to become energetic within the native Polish group and was instrumental within the creation of the programme Poles Aside, on BBC Coventry and Warwickshire Radio, from 1991. An energetic Liberal Democrat, in 1970 he was the get together’s parliamentary candidate for Loughborough.
Jan retired from dentistry in 1996. From 1995, he served in numerous capabilities on the chief of the Federation of Poles in Nice Britain, of which 10 years (1997-99; 2001-09) have been as president. He obtained 4 decorations from the Polish state in recognition of his many achievements.
Magdalena survives him, as do their two youngsters, Jan and Wanda, and 6 grandchildren.
