We wish all our readers and friends
a very Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year!!
Looking forward to seeing you all in 2025!
Best wishes,
Aquila Polonica Publishing
Merry Christmas 2025!
Merry Christmas to all our readers and friends!!
May Santa bring you your heart’s desire this year, and always.
With best wishes,
Aquila Polonica Publishing
Agent Zo – Wins Polish Foreign Ministry Award
We’re so pleased to congratulate author Clare Mulley! Her book Agent Zo: The Untold Story of Fearless WW2 Resistance Fighter Elzbieta Zawacka was awarded the Polish Foreign Ministry’s Best History Book by a Foreign Author for 2024/25! The award was presented to Ms. Mulley by Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Radisław Sikorski at a ceremony held at the Foreign Ministry in Warsaw in early December.
Ms. Mulley said: “Such a joy and an honour to receive this award, and all credit to Brig. Gen. Elżbieta Zawacka and all those who served so courageously for democratic freedoms, and whose stories I’ve tried to tell.”
Agent Zo is the incredible story of Elżbieta Zawacka — the World War II female resistance fighter whose nom de guerre was ‘Zo’ — told here for the very first time. Agent Zo was the only female emissary of the Polish Home Army command to reach London from Warsaw during the war. In Britain, she became the only woman to join the elite Polish Special Forces, the Cichociemni (aka the Unseen & Silent), affiliated with British Special Operations Executive (SOE).
A short video excerpt from Ms. Mulley’s acceptance speech, from her Facebook page:
Check out our prior posts about Agent Zo on its first publication in England, and the terrific review in the Wall St Journal.
2025 Aquila Polonica Article Prize Winner
We’re thrilled to announce that Dr. Louisa M. McClintock, researcher at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Holocaust Justice Project, has won the 2025 Aquila Polonica Article Prize.
This biennial prize is given to the author(s) of the best English-language article published during the previous two years on any aspect of Polish studies. Administered by the Polish Studies Association (“PSA”), which appoints the independent judges, the award carries a $500 honorarium donated by us.
We launched this prize in 2011, and it has been awarded in odd years ever since — 2025 marks the eighth time the prize has been awarded.
The winning article is “In the Shadow of the Crematoria: Investigating Mass Atrocities in Poland, 1944–1945,” The Journal of Modern History, Volume 96, Number 3 (September 2024), https://doi.org/10.1086/731362
The prize committee — which consisted of Elisa-Maria Hiemer of the Free University of Berlin, Karolina May-Chu of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Barbara Milewski of Swarthmore College — described Dr. McClintock’s article as follows:
Dr. McClintock’s article offers a nuanced and sophisticated argument about the challenging work done by the Main Commission to Investigate German War Crimes in Poland. This meticulously researched study, drawing on sources across multiple languages—some previously overlooked—considers the broader context of a European-wide network of state-sponsored war-crimes commissions. The author takes into account the complications of emergent ideological divides between East and West, the immediate political concerns of a new Polish communist regime-turned-state, and the categories of identity that were manipulated against the backdrop of both.
The committee also awarded an honorable mention to Dr. habil. Jagoda Wierzejska, University of Warsaw, for her excellent article “Artistic Forms of Shaping Ukrainian National Identity by Leon Getz,” Nationalities Papers, Volume 53, Issue 3 (May 2025), https://doi.org/10.1017/nps.2024.41
The awards ceremony occurred during PSA’s 2025 annual meeting, which was held in conjunction with the Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, November 20–23, 2025, in Washington, D.C. At the ceremony, the prize committee introduced its decisions as follows:
This year, the award committee received 22 excellent article submissions from a variety of fields, including history, sociology, anthropology, literary and theater studies, and political science. The articles are a testament to the vibrancy of the field of Polish studies, with many of them taking an interdisciplinary approach to their subject of inquiry and guiding the reader to new discoveries or offering fresh perspectives on familiar topics. It was an honor and a pleasure to review and discuss these articles, and we would like to thank all the nominees for sharing their scholarship and allowing us to learn a tremendous amount from their work. Due to the high quality of submissions, the committee decided to award one winner and one honorable mention.
Exeter Remembers 307 Squadron
The historic Guildhall in the city of Exeter, U.K., was the setting for the powerful and moving exhibition, Night Fighters: The Story of 307 Squadron, on November 14 and 15, 2025.
During World War II, Exeter became a target in the “Baedeker Blitz”—a series of Luftwaffe attacks in April and May 1942 aimed at destroying England’s historic cities and important cultural sites, with the goal of demoralizing the civilian population.
That’s when 307 Polish Night Fighter Squadron, known as “The Lwów Eagle Owls,” stepped in to defend Exeter. Formed in 1940, 307 Squadron brought immense experience and determination to the RAF. Many of the Polish fighter pilots had already fought in the battles for Poland and France, and their skills were desperately needed here.
Stationed at RAF Exeter, the squadron flew challenging nighttime patrols, intercepting enemy bombers under the cover of darkness. Using early radar technology and incredible flying expertise, they thwarted numerous bombing raids and helped stop Exeter from suffering even greater destruction.
After a reception and the raising of the Polish Flag above the Exeter Guildhall, a gathering took place at the beautiful Exeter Cathedral, which had been bombed on May 4, 1942, for a short service and laying of wreaths at the 307 Squadron Memorial inside the Cathedral.
Check out our Store for a large selection of items featuring the cool 307 Squadron insignia!
November 11 – Independence Day in Poland
Today, November 11, is the Veterans Day holiday in the United States, which honors all American military veterans living and dead. This date commemorates the end of World War I, one of the bloodiest of modern wars fought from 1914 to 1918 between the Allies (or Entente, consisting principally of Britain, France, Russia and the U.S.), and the Central Powers (principally Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire). At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Armistice with Germany went into effect ending the combat.
In Poland, however, this date is celebrated as the country’s Independence Day. It is the date on which Poland reappeared in Europe as an independent nation after 123 years of having been partitioned by and incorporated into its rapacious neighbors, Austria-Hungary, Prussia (subsequently Germany), and Russia. Learn more about Polish Independence Day here.
Wall St. Journal – “Central Europe Woke Up, Others Went Woke”
The Wall Street Journal published an excellent Letter to the Editor today from Lucja Swiatkowski Cannon, Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. Entitled Central Europe Woke Up, Others Went Woke, Ms. Cannon contrasts the success of policy, economic and strategic decisions made by Central European countries such as Poland, with the failed decisions of Western European countries such as Germany and France.
She concludes:
“In short, Poland and other Central European countries are in a position to assist the U.S. to meet its strategic challenges in Europe and, to some extent, globally. The goal of the coming Trump administration thus isn’t to ‘resuscitate Europe,’ whose elites refuse to change their approach, but to ally itself with Central Europe, which shares its outlook and strategic assessment and has some of the most pro-American electorates in the world.”
Read the entire letter online, or in pdf.
Agent Zo – Great Wall St. Journal Review
We want to congratulate author Clare Mulley on the great review published in today’s Wall St. Journal about her new book Agent Zo: The Untold Story of Fearless WW2 Resistance Fighter Elzbieta Zawacka, which was first published in the UK this past May and in the US in December. We blogged about its UK publication here.
This is the incredible story of Elżbieta Zawacka — the World War II female resistance fighter known as Agent Zo — told here for the very first time. Agent Zo was the only female emissary of the Polish Home Army command to reach London from Warsaw during the war. In Britain, she became the only woman to join the elite Polish Special Forces, the Cichociemni (aka the Unseen & Silent), affiliated with British Special Operations Executive (SOE).
She was secretly trained in the British countryside, and then became the only female member of the Cichociemni to be parachuted behind enemy lines to German-occupied Poland. There, whilst being hunted by the Gestapo who arrested her entire family, she took a leading role in the Warsaw Uprising and the liberation of Poland.
In his review, Andrew Nagorski writes: “Zo was anything but ordinary, perhaps the most extraordinary individual among a multitude of larger-than-life figures who routinely took enormous risks to free their country from Hitler’s overlords….In ‘Agent Zo,’ the British historian Clare Mulley skillfully weaves together Zawacka’s personal story with the broad sweep of events.”
This is a book well worth the read!!
Read the entire Wall St. Journal review online here, or in pdf.
By the way, we are happy that we were able to contribute a little to Clare’s research on Zo!
Happy New Year 2025!
We wish all our readers and friends
a very Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year!!
Looking forward to seeing you all in 2025!
Best wishes,
Aquila Polonica Publishing
Merry Christmas 2024!
Merry Christmas to all our readers and friends!!
May Santa bring you your heart’s desire this year, and always.
With best wishes,
Aquila Polonica Publishing
Mascot of the Month: Mysza & Puppies – 315 Squadron
315 Squadron fighter pilot Henryk Stefankiewicz was nicknamed “Mysza” (Mouse) during his Air Force Academy days, and he gave the same name to his P-51 Mustang fighter plane and to the dog he adopted in the U.K.
When Mysza the dog had four puppies around D-Day, Stefankiewicz named them Ike, Monty, Teddy and Ram — after Allied Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower, British General Bernard Montgomery, Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Arthur Tedder, and Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief Bertram Ramsay.
315 Squadron was a day fighter squadron. Formed in January 1941, it was nicknamed “Dęblin” — after the town where the Polish Air Force Academy has been based since it was founded in 1927. Except for 315 Squadron, Polish fighter squadrons were named for major Polish cities where Polish Air Force fighter bases were located before the war. Bomber and other non-fighter squadrons were given names related to historical provinces of Poland.
Twenty-five year old Stefankiewicz was killed in action on June 22, 1944, during the Normandy campaign that followed D-Day. He was strafing ground targets in the Cherbourg area in his personal Mustang ‘Mysza,’ when he was shot down by enemy flak. His aircraft was found by American forces on June 30. Stefankiewicz was originally buried at the crash site, before being transferred to the US Interim Cemetery at Ste-Mère-Eglise.
His dogs were adopted by other Squadron personnel.
The Squadron’s emblem was the fighting cockerel, derived from one of the prewar fighter units based in Warsaw.
Check out the products in our Store featuring the 315 Squadron insignia!
Mascot of the Month: Barry – 300 Squadron
Photo courtesy Wojtek Matusiak and Robert Gretzyngier.
In this photo, Barry the German Shepherd shares the cockpit of a 300 Squadron Wellington bomber with one of his Squadron mates.
300 Squadron, formed in Britain on July 1, 1940, was the first of four Polish bomber squadrons that flew with the RAF during the war. The Squadron initially flew Fairey Battle medium bombers, but soon converted to Vickers Wellington heavy bombers.
The Squadron flew its first combat mission on the night of September 14, 1940, at the height of the Battle of Britain — its target: German invasion barges at Boulogne on the coast of France, which were waiting only for the Luftwaffe to finish clearing the skies of the RAF and Allied planes before crossing the English Channel loaded with the German invasion force.
Nicknamed “Mazovian,” 300 Squadron’s badge was based on the coat of arms of the Mazovian Dukes, and bore the Mazovian eagle, the British lion, and the Roman numeral CCC (for 300).
In addition to the red-white-and-blue British roundel, planes of the Polish squadrons flying with the RAF also usually carried the red-and-white checkerboard emblem of the Polish Air Force (visible here in the lower left of the photo), as well as the squadron’s individual badge.
Check out the products in our Store featuring the 300 Squadron insignia!
