Ignacy Paderewski

"'Poland will not die, he will not die! He shall live forever in glory and power. The ultimate necessity is to summon the minds and wills of the people to do their duty: fatherland must come before anything & everything.' - Ignacy Paderewski" Ignacy Jan Paderewski GBE GCLH (18, November, 1860 - 29, June, 1941) was a Polish composer, diplomat, philanthropist, pianist, statesman and vintner. During his career, Paderewski served as Ambassador to the League of Nations, fifth Minister of Foreign Affairs, second President of the Council of Ministers for the Republic of Poland and Chief of the National Council for Poland.

Paderewski's administration deployed forces to Belarus, Lithuania, eastern Poland, Silesia and western Ukraine during the Polish-Ukrainian War, the Polish-Prussian War, the Polish-Czechoslovak War, the Polish-Soviet War and the Polish-Lithuanian War, established an elementary and secondary public education programme, extended the territorial boundaries of Poland, prevented the outbreak of famine in the republic and secured a position on the League of Nations Council.

Paderewski personally ensured the inclusion of international recognition of Polish independence in the Treaty of Versailles, founded the Paderewski Scholarship programme for American and European composers, managed the exiled Polish government in London, secured recognition of the Republic of Poland from the British Empire and the United States of America, sponsored the construction of monuments in Europe and the United States, represented the Republic of Poland at the League of Nations Peace Conference of 1919 in Paris and signed the League of Nations' Peace Treaty of 1919 at Versailles.

Trivia

 * Paderewski was multilingual and fluent in English, French and Polish.
 * Paderewski secured Polish independence for 21 years from 1918 to 1939, during which time the Jewish Bolshevik administration of the USSR orchestrated artificial famines claiming the lives of tens of millions throughout eastern Europe and central Asia, in the process preventing the deaths of millions of Poles.