Tadeusz Brzezinski; Former Polish Consul General

Tadeusz Brzezinski, 94, the Polish government-in-exile’s consul general in Montreal during World War II. The father of Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. national security adviser, was consul general from 1938 until the Communist takeover of his homeland at the end of World War II. He served as president of the Polish-Canadian Congress from 1952 to 1962, and in 1975 helped create the World Polish Congress. Brzezinski was born in Zloczow, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and now in the Soviet Union. As a volunteer in the Polish independence movement from 1918 to 1920, Brzezinski saw action in the battle of Lvov and against Soviet forces in the final Warsaw campaign of 1920. He then served as a Polish diplomat for the nascent Polish Republic in Germany, France, the Soviet Ukraine and Canada. While in Leipzig, Germany, before World War II, Brzezinski became involved in efforts to rescue European Jews from Nazi concentration camps. In 1978, his efforts on behalf of the Jewish people were recognized by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. In Montreal on Sunday.