Among the hundreds of thousands of patriots that Poland celebrates for serving in the resistance movement in World War Two there is one black, Nigeria-born man.

Jazz musician August Agboola Browne was in his forties, and had been in Poland for 17 years, when he joined the struggle against Nazi occupation in 1939 - thought to be the only black person in the country to do so.

Under the code name "Ali", he fought for his adopted country during the Siege of Warsaw when Germany invaded, and later in the Warsaw Uprising, which ended 76 years ago this month.

Astoundingly, he survived the war in which 94% of the residents of Poland's capital were either killed or displaced, and continued living in the ravaged city until 1956 when he emigrated with his second wife to Britain.

A small stone monument in Warsaw now commemorates Browne's life. But the scant details that there are may never have been known were it not for an application he made to join a veterans' association in 1949.

The document was filed away for six decades, until 2009, when Zbigniew Osinski from the Warsaw Rising Museum came across it.

This form, filled out in beautiful cursive handwriting and with a passport-style photo attached to one corner, is his Rosetta Stone - the documentary fragment that led researchers to interpret isolated facts about his life and locate living descendants.

In the picture, Browne, dressed in a jacket and a snugly fitting jumper, looks lively and youthful with a hint of a smile on his face. All who met Browne described him as a handsome man and a sharp dresser.

By this time he was in his fifties, as the form reveals that he was born on 22 July 1895 to Wallace and Jozefina in Lagos - then part of the British Empire.

He arrived in England aboard a British merchant ship with his longshoreman father. From there, he joined a theatre troupe touring Europe and ended up in Poland via Germany.



https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54337607

Our walkabouts no start today.

The average Nigerian is restless when confined to a particular environment for too long.

Fighting in faraway Poland in the wee of the nineties?!

Look like his parents were returnee ex slaves.

Come off it!

I'm tempted to think one of us first reached Europe before the colonialist trailed him here and started chopping the continent up and discovering rivers behind our farmlands.

,_____
But this country is farcked up sha.

How many of our war heroes do we remember post civil war, and how many can beat their chest and say that their participation in the expedition is worth it?

How many collect pension before dem die and how many collect paracetamol much more full scale examination and treatment for PTSD that are associated with wars?

He died 16 years after Nigerias independence.

I hope the polish people remember his contribution.

My fellow Nairalanders, let us do as they did it is our destiny to walk this earth

And also to be fruitful and multiply

Hmmm... Yoruba people have been migrating for a long time before Igbo people took over to dominate the record especially after the Nigerian Civil War.

He joined the Polish resistance while his people were being dealt with by the Northern Protectorate, typical of an Ewedu individual, same way Aphonja of Ilorin betrayed his people

RIP to him

Karlovich:
He joined the Polish resistance while his people were being dealt with by the Northern Protectorate, typical of an Ewedu individual, same way Aphonja of Ilorin betrayed his people

dem no dey buy sense for market o

How I wish the story had given us an explanation as to why his mother's name(Jozefina) sounds so Polish.

Was there a prior link of sorts to Poland before he eventually chose to settle there for the long haul?

Quite an interesting character, I must say. If you know or have any idea how brutal the German and Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 was, then you would definitely be awed that this guy actually survived it, despite being a black man in a sea of whites.

He must have been quite good at keeping a low profile and that must have worked to his advantage all through the German occupation- a period which lasted roughly six years. No mean feat, I tell y'all.