General Józef Dowbor-Muśnicki, organiser and commander of the First Polish Corps in Russia (1917–1918) and Commander-in-Chief of the Greater Poland Army during the Greater Poland Uprising, died 89 years ago in Batorowo near Poznań. The soldiers under his command went on to distinguish themselves in the subsequent struggles to secure the borders of reborn Poland, while he himself became one of the symbols of the victorious Greater Poland Uprising. All the more painful, then, was his absence from the fight against Bolshevism in the summer of 1920, when his sense of honour compelled him to reject Piłsudski's offer to take command of an army that was suffering heavy losses in the defence of Lwów, replacing a former subordinate and friend. And so many of his soldiers were defending the Republic of Poland… At a time when the Bolsheviks were approaching Warsaw, the military career of one of Poland's most talented and best-educated generals came to an end. At the same time, he suffered a personal tragedy: the death of his beloved wife. He had another seventeen years to live – years filled with work, but also bitterness over the undeserved humiliations inflicted upon him by petty-minded men in a Poland that had finally regained its independence. He raised his children well: his son Gedymin fought against the communists in Spain, while his daughters… He left them a testament: "My children must remember that they are Poles, […] that their father did everything in his power to restore Poland to its former glory and strength. He therefore has the right to demand of his descendants that they never bring dishonour upon our family name". He did not live to witness the tragedy of September 1939 – the partition of the Republic of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union. He passed away in 1937. Fate spared him the news of his daughters' deaths: Janina, murdered in Katyń, and Agnieszka, executed in Palmiry. This was how the homeland he had helped resurrect was being destroyed.