A Real-Life Tale of Derring-Do

The Oxford English Dictionary defines derring-do as “daring action or feats.” I’ve never committed a deed of derring-do, perhaps because I didn’t serve in the military. But I got to know

Jan Nowak

(1914-2005), a man whose World War II derring-do on behalf of the Polish Home Army earned him a bronze statue in Warsaw. In “A Courier From Warsaw,” a powerful and disturbing memoir, Nowak recounts his many daring actions.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

called the book “a gripping account of personal heroism.”

Serving as a liaison between the Polish underground and the Allies, Nowak made five secret missions from Warsaw to the West. “Employing many disguises, Nowak traveled in secret to Scandinavia, Britain, North Africa and even across Nazi Germany itself to Switzerland and France,” Brzezinski wrote. “He . . . was usually a step ahead of the Gestapo. . . . He was involved in adventures which read like a film scenario.”

Though Nowak avoided arrest, his memoir is mainly about failure. He failed to persuade British authorities that the Nazis were committing genocide. “The murder of three million people organized like a factory on a kind of conveyor-belt principle was beyond the ordinary human imagination.” A Jewish emissary from Warsaw committed suicide because world-wide Jewish organizations didn’t believe his account.

“A Courier From Warsaw” is also about the failure of the Warsaw Uprising, in which Nowak participated, and Poland’s subjugation by communism after the war.

For many years Nowak was director of the Polish Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. When I met him in the 1980s, he was head of the Polish-American Congress, but he often visited the RFE/RL’s Washington office, where I worked. A genial man with a great deal of charm, he would ask me about my writing, and I would ask him about the film adaptation of his book. A company had bought the rights to “A Courier From Warsaw,” but the project fell through because Nowak insisted on final approval of the script.

“A Courier From Warsaw” ends with Nowak in London on V-E day. Seeing Britons celebrating, he hopes that one day people in Warsaw will be celebrating their freedom. “Our day of victory will also come.” Nowak’s memoir was a great success in Poland, where it was published underground, and it undoubtedly contributed to Poland’s surge toward freedom in the 1980s.

Though “A Courier From Warsaw” describes very dark times, it is uplifting because it is about innumerable men and women who fought against tyranny. Nowadays men who commit “daring action or feats” are sometimes accused of “toxic masculinity.” An absurd phrase, as foolhardiness is not courage. To preserve freedom, a country needs men and women who are capable of derring-do.

Mr. Miller is author of “Walking New York: Reflections of American Writers From

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