The DSH invites you to the new exhibition "ALL INCLUSIVE. THE ODYSSEY OF LIEUTENANT ANDRES 1939-1947". For the first time we will present to the public the private archive of photographs of Lieutenant Stanisław Andres, a soldier of General Władysław Anders during the war, stored and described by his grandsons: Tomasz Wójcik and Michał Wójcik. The curators of the exhibition are Joanna Kinowska, Tomasz Wójcik and Michał Wójcik.
In the curatorial text, the creators of the exhibition emphasise that on the surface, the story of Stanisław Andres is like thousands of other stories about soldiers and wanderers from the years of World War II. Lieutenant Andres' good fortune and at the same time... misfortune consisted in the fact that he had a surname in common with General Władysław Anders, the commander of the 2nd Polish Corps... almost in common, because there is a hardly noticeable exchange of one letter. Perhaps it was this "closeness" that gave him a somewhat privileged position in Anders' army. He took photographs to whom and where he wanted, but only for himself. He was not a professional photographer, but an amateur who never parted with his camera. In total, he claimed, he took half a thousand photographs, of which more than three hundred have survived to this day.

Stanislaw Andres (born 1909) was mobilised in August 1939. He fought in Poland's defensive war and ended up in Soviet captivity. He miraculously avoided death in the Katyn Forest and was sent to a gulag. And then a second miracle happened - amnesty and the Polish Armed Forces when Stalin came to an agreement with the Allies. Under the Sikorski-Mayski treaty, a Polish army was created in the Soviet Union. And it was with him that Second Lieutenant (then) Andres once again set off into the unknown.

We called his odyssey 'all-inclusive'.

All inclusive...

...because Lieutenant Andres' war trail included both the Siberian exile and bridge tournaments in the desert. There was fierce cannon firing, as well as water scouts in the Euphrates. Brotherhood in arms and male friendship. The sadness of separation and fear for loved ones. And boredom, a lot of boredom. The kind of boredom that is not at all associated with the horrors of war.

Stanislaw Andres was incredibly lucky. Without major wounds, he walked the entire Anders trail: from the USSR through Iran, Iraq, India, Palestine and Egypt to Italy, where he fought, and the symbol of these struggles was the Battle of Monte Cassino.

Lieutenant Andres' photographs are not typical war reportage. There is hardly any war in these frames. There is an army and there are soldiers, but they are rather colleagues, often in non-soldierly poses. There are no charges or attacks, no frontal struggles. There are situations from the soldiers' camp life, work, exercises, training, their tours and holidays, mainly in Iraq and Palestine. And there is something else too. It is the emotions captured in the frames. The joy of the brotherhood of arms and the smouldering sadness. There is nostalgia for loved ones and war boredom. There is a sense of aching emptiness and loneliness in a crowd of soldiers as confused as he is.

An unknown collection of photographs by Stanisław Andres from the years 1941-1946 tells the story of the Polish Army in the East and the 2nd Polish Corps from this less than heroic side. After all, this was also the fate of the subordinates of the famous general, who was to return to Poland - as he said - on a white horse. As we all know, he did not return. Instead, Lieutenant Andres returned. Instead of being embraced by his waiting wife and daughter, whom he knew only from a photograph - he went straight into the clutches of the security police, who immediately dragged him off the wharf in Gdynia.

The epic of the 2nd Corps was once called 'a trail of hope' by the renowned British historian Norman Davies. General Anders' soldiers (many of whom had been imprisoned early on in Soviet prisons and gulags) performed many heroic deeds and passed into legend. Despite this 'fame of the immortals', they were only rehabilitated in Poland after 1989, with the change of power and the fall of communism. Since then, many monographs, memoirs and studies have been published about them.

The photographs from Stanislaw Andres' home archive have not been shown or published before. Here is a selection of one hundred of them. They are commented on by anecdotes and stories written down from the memories and interviews conducted with the grandfather by his grandsons, Tomasz and Michał Wójcik. For them, this pictorial tale has always been like a comic book or the storyboard of an adventure film. For him, it was the greatest adventure of his life.
Joanna Kinowska, Michał Wójcik, Tomasz Wójcik

Stanisław Andres (1909-2005) was born in Stary Sącz into a forester's family, and spent his childhood in Stryj. He attended secondary school in Lviv. He studied at the Faculty of Law of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and at the Faculty of Law and Economics of the University of Poznań. He did not complete his studies, and worked at Stomil as a procurement director. In 1936, he attained the rank of second lieutenant in reserve and received an officer's patent. He was a staunch Piłsudski loyalist. Before the War, he married Wanda Siuchnińska, and they had two children: Izabela (b. 1940) and Jan (b. 1948).

After the Third Reich's aggression against Poland, he took part in the 1939 defensive war as a soldier of the 70th infantry regiment. He fought in the Battle of the Bzura. After his unit was disbanded, he tried to get through to Romania. Near Lviv, he was arrested by the Soviet NKVD political police. He was initially held in a POW camp for Polish officers at Kozelsk, from where he was transferred to Kyiv, where he recalled he was on trial "for oppressing the working class". He was sentenced to death; however, on 13 July 1940, the Special Council of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) commuted his sentence to eight years of hard labour in the Gulag. He remained in the Interior Ministry's Northern Railway camp in the Komi Republic until 20 August 1941.

Released under the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement, he reached the garrison in Tockoye in September 1941. This was one of the places of formation of the Polish Army in the Soviet Union (from the citizens of the Second Republic of Poland deported and imprisoned in the USSR) under the command of General Władysław Anders. Since then, he has served in the Polish Army.

He then began to take photographs.
With the Anders Army, he was evacuated from the USSR to Iran. He was then sent to Iraq and Palestine. In the Middle East, he served as a second lieutenant in the 3rd Carpathian Rifle Division (from May 1942). In the 7th Carpathian Rifle Battalion he was a platoon commander. Then (from December 1942) in the 3rd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment, in the 2nd Squadron, 6th Battery, he was a reconnaissance officer and platoon commander. In the 2nd Polish Corps (formed in July 1943), he continued his military training and followed the route: Palestine, Iraq, Egypt. Then the combat route in Italy: Ancona, Monte Cassino, Bologna. Promoted to the rank of lieutenant on 1 January 1945. After the end of hostilities, as a reconnaissance officer, he was transferred to the 3rd Squadron of the 2nd Armoured Division. He served in the Polish Armed Forces in the West until 2 December 1946.

He returned to Poland in May 1947 and settled with his family in Wałcz, then in Koszalin. He worked in the local WSS "Społem" until his retirement. He was a loyal supporter of the Gwardia Koszalin football team, as well as its photographer. Awarded, among others, the Cross of Valour, the Monte Cassino Cross (1944), the British War Medal, the Star of Italy Medal, the British Defence Medal (1945) and the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1975). He was promoted to the rank of major in 2001. He died in 2005.