My cousin Andrzej Twardzicki, who has died aged 94, came to the UK after fighting with the Polish resistance during the second world war and settled in Britain, where he became an engineer and then an academic, lecturing at Queen Mary University of London and running postgraduate courses at Imperial College London.
Andrzej was brought up in Kraków but born in Lwów, in the Ukrainian part of what was then the new republic of Poland, to Jadwiga (nee Siedlecka), who worked for the Red Cross as a translator, and her husband, Tadeusz, an adviser to the Polish ministry of agriculture.
When Germany invaded Poland in 1939 his father joined the resistance, dying in a motorcycle accident on a secret mission, after which Andrzej’s older brother, Franek, joined the resistance in Warsaw and was killed a year later. Andrzej himself then joined up in Kraków, and took part in several ambushes of German patrols.
In 1945, fearing the consequences of the Red Army’s approach towards Poland, he set off with two friends, reaching the safety of a sector of southern Germany, where he joined Polish II Corps, the operational unit of the Polish Armed Forces in the west. He was sent by ship to Scotland, where he lived in barracks for two years, learning English and managing to pass his general matriculation, after which he went to London University to study electrical engineering.
After graduating, Andrzej worked for British Thomson-Houston, an engineering and heavy industrial company, in Rugby, Warwickshire. It was in Rugby that he met his landlady’s niece, Halina Kornela, a fellow Pole, who had lost both parents during the second world war and had come to Britain with her aunt. Andrzej coached her through her A-levels and two years later they got engaged. One of their first holidays together was an expedition to the Alps.
Halina went on to study medicine and became a doctor. After they got married in 1962, the couple enjoyed an adventurous road trip through Europe, all the way to Yugoslavia.
Back in Rugby, their first child, Anna, was born and Andrzej joined GEC, designing generators for ships and power stations and other big infrastructure projects, including the Kariba dam in Zimbabwe.
After completing a master’s degree he began a long career in academia, eventually becoming senior lecturer in electrical engineering at Queen Mary University of London and running postgraduate courses at Imperial College London.
After retirement in 1985, Andrzej did some freelance work for another decade and made many trips to Poland. A keen photographer, he captured some dramatic images of Kraków in 1983, when it had fallen under martial law. He worked for several charities, including Medical Aid For Poland, accompanying long-distance lorries to deliver medical equipment to hospitals during the clampdown on the Solidarity trade union.
A keen walker and mountaineer, for some years he worked as a volunteer climbing guide in the Austrian Alps and the Tatra mountains in Poland.
He is survived by Halina, their daughters Anna, Ewa and Maja, and grandchildren Adam and Verity.
