Otton
Hulacki made an unforgettable impression on all who met him. He was larger than
life, and he treated life as a great adventure, both in his youth and in his
later years, when he travelled incessantly across Europe and beyond. A Polish
patriot, both a victim of deportation and a war hero, an active community
leader and a successful businessman, he won over both adults and
schoolchildren, as well as members of his own large family, with his resilience,
his charm and his sense of mischief.
He was born
in the Polish city of Lwów (now Lviv in the Ukraine) on 2nd of January 1922. His
father was a police officer. Even as a boy he was an active patriot, selling
stamps for the Polish Maritime and Colonial League, as well as raising funds
for the Anti-Aircraft Defence League. Aged just 13, he joined the “Young
Eagles” Riflemen in 1935, and soon he became a junior instructor.
In 1939
after Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, he found himself
in the Soviet Zone. Both occupying powers had instituted a reign of terror and
had declared that the Polish state no longer existed. Despite that Otton volunteered,
as a 17-year-old, to serve in the clandestine Poland Victory Service, a
forerunner of the future Polish Home Army, which was the main resistance group
against the German and Soviet occupation. However, in the spring of 1940, his
father was arrested by the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, and imprisoned in
deepest Russia. Otton himself was arrested a few days later and deported along
with his mother and two sisters on a 3-week journey in primitive cattle trucks
to Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. Initially he worked in a brick factory and
later he was cut off from his family and made to work in an alabaster mine.
Following
the German invasion of Russia in 1941, the Soviet government came to an
agreement with the Polish government in exile in London to amnesty the hundreds
of thousands deported and arrested Poles who had survived brutal life in the
camps and deportation settlements. A Polish Army was set up in Russia under the
command of General Anders, who became Otton’s great hero. Otton tried to join
as soon as he could get the Russians to release him. On his way south at
Orenburg he miraculously met his father, who had also been released from jail. In
their long journey to join the Army, Hulacki father and son, along with a small
group of Polish and Jewish recruits, including Menachem Begin, future prime
minister of Israel, barely survived disease and starvation.
In March
1942, aged just 20, Otton reached the army recruiting office in Uzbekistan and joined
the 6th Armoured Regiment, the “Children of Lwów”. The army was full of
starving emaciated recruits who had survived Russian camps. Otton himself
succumbed to a serious bout of typhus which he barely survived, on one occasion
waking up surrounded by dead bodies.
The
following year the Polish Army and many of its dependents were able finally to
leave Russia and transfer to Iran and the Middle East. Here Otton was able to resume
his interrupted education while continuing his army training. Having obtained his high school diploma, he returned
full time to his army unit. In 1944 his regiment was incorporated into the 2nd
Warsaw Armoured Brigade which was part of the Second Polish Corps in Italy,
still commanded by General Anders. Six days before the famous fourth Battle of
Monte Cassino in which the Polish Army took part, he was transferred
temporarily from the “Children of Lwów” Regiment to the Advance Tank Supply
Squadron. Despite his young age he was placed in charge of a 38-ton Sherman
tank with a 2-person crew. His Sherman tank was to take part in opening up the steep
and narrow Cavendish Road to enable the Armoured Brigade to muster for an attack
up the mountain towards the rear of the Benedictine Monastery. The road had
been a former mule track constructed that February by Indian and New Zealand engineers
for the second battle of Monte Cassino. It had then been badly damaged by shell
fire during an American attack in the third battle of Monte Cassino. It had only
just been widened again and cleared of mines by Polish engineers. The first of
the two Sherman tanks allocated to this mission, missed its footing and crashed
down the mountain side. Otton, who was in the second tank, managed to continue successfully
for several kilometres with his tank along the dangerous road without further
accident and showed that the road was now passable for the Polish army’s
advance. Otton believed, as he explained to me once with his usual chuckle,
that he was given that task because he tended to speak his mind too often, regardless
of whoever was listening. That I can believe.
After the
battle, 22-year-old Otton continued his training as an armoured brigade cadet
in Gubbio and finished his studies in April 1945. He returned to his old unit participating
in the battle for Bologna and was promoted to sub-lieutenant.
At the end
of the war, the soldiers of the Second Corps had found themselves in Italy on
the side of the victorious allies, but without a home to return to, as Poland had
now been handed over by the Allied Powers to be under Soviet control. What was
worse, Otton’s beloved native city Lwów was now no longer in Poland. The
British government initially urged many of the Polish officers and soldiers to
return to Communist Poland, but Otton and his brother Mieczyslaw, who also
served in the Anders Army, as well as most of their compatriots from Eastern Poland,
knew what Soviet rule was like. They refused to go. Eventually, the British
government agreed for Polish soldiers who did not want to return to Poland to be
allowed to settle in the UK. Along with his army comrades Otton spent several
years learning English and picking up a trade. After further studies Otton went
into the printing business and set up his own successful printing firm. He gained
some profitable contracts printing for foreign airlines, and he also moved into
property.
He married a
young Portsmouth girl, Jacy Stewart, and eventually after two decades living
and working in London, he settled on the Isle of Wight, with his growing family
of two daughters Alexandra and Wanda and three sons Stewart, Otton and Jason.
He has since tragically lost two of his children, Alexandra and Otton, and one
grandson Richard, but otherwise his family has grown, and he has 12 grandchildren
and 10 great grandchildren, with another one due soon. Jacey is here with us today
and is being cared for by her daughter Wanda.
Otton was
initially active in the Polish Students and Graduates Association and was an
active member of the Polish community in London. He was a representative in Wandsworth
for the Polish National Fund, which raised funds for the Polish Government in
Exile. He was a member of the Southampton Polish ExCombatants (SPK) Branch nr
309. In 2008, he became a member of the Executive Committee of the Polish
ExCombatants Association (SPK) in Great Britain. After 2012, when the SPK was
wound up, Otton was Honorary President of an organization consisting of 15 SPK
branches, including Southampton, which wanted to continue their activities, and
took on the name of the Friends of Polish Veterans Association (SPPW). Since
2016 he has been a regular participant in the march past the Cenotaph in London
on Remembrance Sunday and has appeared in many commemorative events. These
included the 75th anniversary of the Battles of Monte Cassino held in 2019 at
the Arboretum in Staffordshire, and the Royal Command Festival of Remembrance at
the Royal Albert Hall the same year, both organized by the Royal British
Legion. On that second occasion he was interviewed live during the performance
by the BBC.
In 1997 he
was active in setting up the Association of Friends of ORP “Błyskawica”, which
commemorated the Polish destroyer, constructed in Cowes, which is celebrated
here because of its role in the defence of its own home port of Cowes during a German
raid. Every year Otton organized a ceremony in Cowes to celebrate that event, accompanied
by representatives of the Polish navy. Otton also set up the fund and the
committee which restored the monument in
Kingston Cemetery in Portsmouth, dedicated to Polish survivors of the 1830
Polish November Uprising against Tsarist Russia. That monument is also the site
of a regular annual ceremony attended by the municipal authorities of
Portsmouth, the local Polish community, with an active participation of Polish
schoolchildren from the local Saturday schools. Otton Hulacki also actively
contributed to the founding of a Polish Saturday school on the Isle of Wight.,
and he was a frequent and popular guest speaker at the Polish schools in
Portsmouth and Southampton as well.
Despite his
age and his disability, as a wheelchair patient, and despite the restrictions
of the covid pandemic, he has regularly attended commemorative events not only
in England, but also in Poland, Italy, France, Norway, Israel, and has rarely
refused any invitation to travel to represent his Polish comrades at such
events. He gave many interviews to magazines, radio and television stations in
Poland, the UK, and indeed wherever he could travel. He attended the Monte
Cassino commemorations in Italy in May every year, up to and including May of
this year. His last trip was at the invitation of the Odra-Niemen Association
in Poland from where he returned barely a few days before his sudden and sad death
aged 102 on September 25th, 2023, in Wootton, when he succumbed to
heart failure.
To his last
days he readily communicated with his many friends by phone and retained his
memory of events and his cheeky sense of humour. He had become something of a
media celebrity but his continued public sense of service to Poland and its
wartime traditions led to his continued promotion over the years, most recently
to the rank of Major, and eventually last year to Lieutenant Colonel. He was a recipient
of the Polish Army Medal, the Monte Cassino Cross, the 1939-45 Star, the Star
of Italy, the Defence Medal and the War Medal 1939-45.
His life
was long and eventful, but he will live even longer in the memory of his
family, his friends, and the Polish community at large. He had served his
country faithfully and his mission, to achieve and promote a free and
independent Poland, was completed successfully. May he rest in peace. Cześć
Jego Pamięci.
Wiktor
Moszczynski
