Being a Scout doesn’t make you a hero, but there are a lot of who heroes who were Scouts. Kazimierz Piechowski is one of those heroes. Mr. Piechowski was a young Scout from Poland caught in the wake of Nazi hate.
When the Nazis invaded…, in 1939, the scouting movement was seen by the invaders as a symbol of nationalism – and a potential source of resistance. “I was 19 when the war broke out,” Piechowski says. “Four days after Germany declared war, they arrived in Tczew. They started shooting the scouts.”
Piechowski eventually led a crew to escape from Auschwitz. His brave actions and the precise tension of them clearing the last perimeter is the muse behind the song Kommander’s Car by Katy Carr. I’d never heard of her before today. In Piechowski’s BBC interview, you can hear that he appreciates Carr capturing that particular moment as strongly as she does in the song – and it gives him closure knowing that story was told and told right.
It’s not just back in the wars of our fathers and grandfathers either that you see Scouts day after day going above and beyond. When I recently heard about the Scouts in Libya, I was amazed and impressed by the roles that Scouts jumped into in service for their country. As I hear more of what they are doing I can only pray for their strength.
The 3500 boy scouts of the city, most aged between eight and 18, have been cleaning the streets, distributing food and medicine, assisting doctors and orderlies in hospitals, finding homes for refugees, providing first aid to the injured, giving blood, picking vegetables, unloading aid shipments, clearing shrapnel from the airport runway, making meals for the fighters, and even cleaning the rebels’ weapons.
Some of the older ones have had to wash the bodies of the dead.
May all the Scouts around the world come to know the relative safety and security of your American brothers. BP’s goal was for a world of Peace Scouts, yet so many are face to face with war.
