Rafał Gan-Ganowicz

Rafał Gan-Ganowicz (23 April 1932 – 22 November 2002) was a Polish soldier-in-exile, mercenary, journalist, member of the National Council of Poland, and political and social activist, dedicating his life to anti-communism.

His father served in the French Foreign Legion for a time, and later traveled to South America for business, investing in a rubber plantation in Brazil and gold mines in Argentina.

One event that particularly stuck with him was seeing one of his friends, an older boy who had been maimed while fighting in the Warsaw Uprising, thrown down a flight of stairs and called a "bandit" by a communist official.

In June 1950, the Polish Secret Police started to round up all suspected members of any anti-state groups and Rafał was tipped off by a friend that they were about to arrest him.

Fearing being tortured into giving up other members of the group, he boarded a Soviet supply train, hiding in the undercarriage, that was headed for Berlin and escaped Poland.

He had hoped that the unit would act as a commando group used in a NATO invasion of Eastern Europe in the early days of the Cold War, being dropped behind enemy lines in Poland.

[4] On November 11, 1989, he was appointed a member of the National Council of the Republic of Poland from France in the eighth term (1989-1991) by President of the Polish Government-in-exile Ryszard Kaczorowski.

In 2007, president Lech Kaczyński posthumously awarded Ganowicz the Order of Polonia Restituta "for outstanding services in promoting democratic changes in Poland, for achievements in professional and social work undertaken for the benefit of the country".