20 - From Number One to No One

Summary

I arrived at Heathrow airport on 14 July 1954. Waiting for me was Scarlett in the company of two representatives of the British Foreign Office Special Branch, ready to receive my instant request for political asylum. They took us to a hiding place up-river on the Thames, the unpretentious home of a charming middle-aged couple who treated us more like prodigal children than official guests. As the Foreign Office already knew all about me from Scarlett, and probably from undercover enquiries through their contacts in Poland, I was never interrogated, only treated with the utmost courtesy, kindness and discretion.

My escape was reported dramatically in the newspapers of the free world. A press conference, for which I briefly left my country retreat, allowed me to give my precise reasons for leaving my native country as well as the opportunity I had longed for to speak out about Poland's enslavement by Soviet Russia, about the misery of our people and the frustration of intellectuals, scientists, writers and all creative artists. I prepared a full statement, which was printed and broadcast all over the free world, ending with the words, ‘I hope very much that my protest will help my fellow composers still living in Poland with their struggle towards liberation from the rigid political control imposed upon them …’.

The Government of People's Poland, already furious over my escape, was clearly even angrier about my statement. I was condemned in the Polish press as a ‘traitor to the Polish nation’. In addition to a bitter charge that I was ‘running away from the task of creating a new style in Polish music’ and ‘avoiding the duties of creative patriotism’, I was subjected to the customary methods of character-assassination. I was said to have ‘stolen’ the small sum of money handed to me on arrival in Zurich, which I had quite legally used to pay for my meals while still recording and promoting Polish music. My ‘cynical desertion’ of my native land they said was for financial gain – and added that I had illegally smuggled out of Poland musical instruments inherited from my father.