From digging trenches and building walls, to learning survival skills, Poland is increasingly aware of risks posed by its eastern neighbours
Cezary Pruszko still remembers the civil defence training of his Communist-era schooldays – map reading, survival skills, and a sense that the danger of war was real and ever present.
“My generation grew up with those threats. You didn’t have to explain why this mattered,” said the 60-year-old Pruszko, as he refreshed those skills at an army base outside Warsaw on a recent frosty Saturday morning. With dozens of other Polish civilians, he toured a bomb shelter, fitted gas masks and practised striking sparks from a flint to start a fire.
The training, designed to boost civilian resilience, was part of a new programme that aims to train 400,000 Polish citizens by 2027. The voluntary scheme is open to anyone from schoolchildren to pensioners.
“We are living in the most dangerous times since the end of the second world war,” said Poland’s defence minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, at the programme’s launch last month. “Each of us must have the skills, knowledge and practical knowhow to cope in a crisis.”
