Jadwiga Pilsudska-Jaraczewska, centre, during the war

Jadwiga Pilsudska-Jaraczewska, who has died aged 94, was the younger daughter of the pre-war Polish leader and military hero Marshal Jozef Pilsudski; after the German invasion of her country, she fled to Britain, where she served during the war as a pilot in the Air Transport Auxiliary.

Jadwiga Pilsudska was born on February 28 1920 in Warsaw, the younger of two daughters of the Polish “chief of state” by his then mistress Aleksandra Szczerbinska, whom he was unable to marry because his first wife, Maria, refused him a divorce. They married after Maria died in 1921.

Many Poles regard Pilsudski as their greatest national hero – the man who helped Poland regain its independence at the end of the First World War after 125 years when it had been wiped off the map. In the year Jadwiga was born, he led Polish troops to a stunning victory over Russian Bolshevik forces in the Soviet-Polish war of 1919-20. If his later record, as de facto dictator of Poland from 1926 to his death in 1935, remains more controversial due to his internment of political opponents, his vision of a multi-ethnic Poland, tolerant of different peoples and faiths, is one which continues to inspire many Polish democrats.

From their earliest years Pilsudski’s daughters, Jadwiga and her elder sister Wanda, joined him in public appearances. Brought up in Warsaw and educated at a private school, they lived for some time in the Belweder Palace, which now houses a museum dedicated to their father, and at Milusin, a small manor house at Sulejówek (about 12 miles east of Warsaw), that had been given to the Marshal by his soldiers.

Jadwiga’s interest in aviation began in childhood. From building model aeroplanes, she graduated to flying gliders in 1937 and went on to gain her pilot’s licence.

After leaving school in 1939, she wanted to study aeronautical engineering at Warsaw’s Technical University, but her plans were interrupted by the German invasion that September. Shortly afterwards she fled with her mother and sister to Sweden before being evacuated on a special flight to England, where she embarked on a degree in Architecture at Newnham College, Cambridge.

February 1940 saw the foundation of the ATA as a civilian service dedicated to ferrying aircraft around the UK for the RAF, and Jadwiga soon made the first of several attempts to join the new service.

^{Jadwiga Pilsudska-Jaraczewska with officers during the war}

By the spring of 1942 there was an increasing demand for ATA pilots. British women pilots had been recruited from the early months of the war, and in the spring of 1942 the first American women pilots arrived. They were the largest group of overseas ATA pilots. Excluding those from the Commonwealth, the next largest, and certainly the most colourful, were the Poles. From 1940 there had been a steady trickle of Polish male pilots; among the June 1942 contingent was the young and attractive Jadwiga.

Initially she flew training and light transport aircraft before graduating to fighters such as the Hurricane and Spitfire (her personal favourite). Before transferring to a new aircraft type, pilots spent a brief period sitting in the cockpit to familiarise themselves, and then, using a standard checklist, they took off on their first flight .

Jadwiga, who was described by her superiors as “ of above average skills”, rose to be a second officer and this allowed her to fly Class 4 aircraft, which included advanced twin-engined aircraft such as the Wellington bomber and the Mosquito in addition to fighters and transport aircraft.

^{Jadwiga Pilsudska-Jaraczewska (second from right) with other ATA pilots during the war}

After two years with the ATA she decided to return to her studies and in July 1944 took leave of absence to enrol at the Polish School of Architecture at the Polish University Abroad, housed at Liverpool University, from where she graduated in 1946. In 1944 she had married Lieutenant Andrzej Jaraczewski, a Polish naval officer, with whom she had a son and daughter.

After the war they remained in political exile in Britain. For a time Jadwiga worked as an architect in the urban and regional planning department of the London County Council, before she and her husband founded a small company producing lamps and furniture of her own design.

She never took British citizenship, instead using a Nansen passport (for political refugees) pending the day when she could resume full Polish citizenship.

Her daughter, Joanna, returned to Poland in 1979 and married the Solidarity activist Janusz Onyszkiewicz (who would serve two terms as Poland’s Minister of Defence in the 1990s). Jadwiga waited until the fall of communism in 1990, when she and her husband and sister returned home, settling in Warsaw, where Andrzej Jaraczewski died in 1992.

With her sister, Jadwiga co-founded the Jozef Pilsudski Family Foundation, and in 2000 they persuaded the state to return the family manor of Milusin, where plans are now under way for the construction of a museum dedicated to their father.

^{Jadwiga Pilsudska-Jaraczewska in later life (AP)}

For her wartime service in the ATA Jadwiga Pilsudska-Jaraczewska was awarded the Polish Bronze Cross of Merit with Swords, and in 2008 she was presented with the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta by the Polish president Lech Kaczynski.

Her sister Wanda died in 2001. Her children survive her.

Jadwiga Pilsudska-Jaraczewska, born February 28 1920, died November 16 2014

Having worked in the field of equality legislation, I reject the suggestion that it dictates to people and controls what they can say or think (Paul Mason, G2, 17 November), as was claimed in a Sheffield University study. From Britain’s first Race Relations Act of 1965 to the 2010 Equality Act, such legislation merely seeks to ensure that members of minority groups are equally entitled to choose where they live, work or are educated, living fulfilled lives without being hampered by other people’s prejudices.

Anyone who wants to throw a private party for redheaded lesbians excluding blond heterosexual men is free to do so, but must never exercise those prejudices when employing people or letting them accommodation. The great achievement of race relations legislation since 1965 has been to make racial prejudice socially unacceptable enough to make people hesitate before expressing it. That some people still display it is regrettable, but must be accepted as part of the diversity of human beings.

I write as the widow of a black Jamaican, with a Ghanaian-born son-in-law and an Irish-Canadian grandmother from Quebec. I am also descended from a Huguenot pastor who escaped from Roman Catholic persecution in France in 1686 eventually to settle in Holland, which entitles me to live in England’s oldest immigrant housing scheme, in Rochester.
Jane Hammond
Rochester, Kent

• The dismal plight of many women in academia makes depressing reading (Low pay, brief maternity leave and few senior roles, Education, 18 November). In higher education in Britain just 35 women are vice-chancellors out of a total of 170, women form only 17% of the professoriat, and nearly three-quarters of the posts paying more than £57,000 are held by men. The plight of pregnant academics and mothers with young children was particularly distressing to read.

Surely vice-chancellors, with their combined IQs, can come up with some solutions to these issues. Is it not time these blatant inequalities in higher education were addressed?
June Purvis
Emeritus professor of women’s and gender history, University of Portsmouth

George Monbiot’s call for “a government commission on post-growth economics” should be urgent parliamentary business (Growth: the destructive God that can never be appeased, 19 November). All MPs should read the article, and they should tell us how they respond to some relevant questions. Do you realise that economic growth today demands more fossil fuel combustion that exacerbates disastrous climate change? Do you believe the UK could create a steady-state economy? Do you agree that social justice in a steady-state economy would require major reduction in the gap between the rich and the poor? Do you agree that the survival of most of the human race depends on these issues? Are you desperately worried about the world your grandchildren will inherit?

Britain led the world in the industrial revolution with economic growth: could we now take the lead in a steady-state revolution with zero economic growth?
Michael Bassey
Newark, Nottinghamshire

• The G20 in Brisbane was a missed opportunity to reinvigorate the global economy. Instead of stimulating new international action, its red-light warnings have been used by David Cameron to pre-empt criticism of any forthcoming downturn in the UK economy (Cameron fears second global financial crash, 17 November) and dismissed by Ed Miliband as irrelevant to explaining any future UK failures (Miliband mocks PM over ‘excuses’ for borrowing, 18 November). The sad truth is that Britain should have been playing a leading role before and during the G20 to mobilise support for multilateral actions of stimulus and balanced global growth, on which the health of the world economy depends. Global actions of stimulus briefly succeeded in 2009, though sadly were abandoned before they had taken hold on a global scale, though not before they had demonstrated some real success. The global economy grew 4% in 2010. A fuller agenda of what was and is still required was set out in the Stiglitz commission report presented to the UN general assembly, which dealt with both short- and medium-run actions, as well as providing specific proposals for diminishing financial risks and strengthening global institutions. Until such actions are pursued seriously, protecting the UK economy from a global downturn will be whistling in the wind.
Professor Richard Jolly
Lewes, Sussex

• The prime minister’s decision to announce his fears about the instability of the global financial system (Opinion, 17 November) was surprising. What was his gloating over the economies of the eurozone supposed to achieve? I questioned Mario Draghi, chair of the European Systemic Risk Board, in the European parliament on this unhelpful behaviour. He refused to comment. Given the crucial role that confidence plays in the world of finance, it appears that Cameron is himself becoming a systemic risk. I do hope that he is not risking the future of the continent’s financial system merely to score some political points at home.
Molly Scott Cato MEP
Green, South West England

• Red warning lights have been flashing for some time on our fragile recovery, based on the usual housing bubble that has now burst leaving thousands of households  in dread of an interest rate rise. Running a country is not the same as running a business or a household, described by one economist as the zombie idea still walking. As the national debt is historically low, it makes sense to borrow at low interest rates to invest in the rising generation, too many of whom have been sacrificed on the altar of the deficit. Our children are tested to death but not educated to have the skills necessary to find employment, and feel they are on the scrapheap. We do not employ them, or house them, but we do lock too many of them up in overcrowded prisons where the suicide rate is rising.Another £30bn worth of cuts will reduce us to consumers of privatised public services rather that citizens in a democracy.
Margaret Phelps
Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan

• Am I the only one to treat the news that the economy is not growing; as good news? We live on a planet with finite resources. I can see no difference between an economy that relies on growth and a pyramid selling scam.
Rod Thompson
Camborne, Cornwall

I am a GP, just in from work (8.40pm) after a day at my surgery. Just a normal day, not a late night. And no, I am not a martyr to the NHS. I am just trying to make sure that all my patients are seen, all my correspondence from hospital colleagues is dealt with, all my results are read and filed, all my letters written, all reports I have been asked to do (which are not strictly part of my NHS work, but there is no one else to do them) are completed. Actually, I did not do the last bit. That will have to wait until the weekend, in my own time. Am I smiling now? No, I am seething with rage at Mary Dejevsky’s hatchet job on general practice (Most of us just want a GP appointment and a friendly smile at reception, 19 November).

We get the health service we pay for. In fact, according to international studies, we get more than that: we get extremely good value for our taxes. In GPs we get, in the main, highly skilled and highly motivated people who continue to give all they can despite a fall in their income in real terms of 16%, despite a fall in the proportion of the total NHS income that goes to general practice of a similar amount, despite demands for instant access, telephone appointments and email service, and despite an ever-more-complex and ageing population to care for. We need a real debate on what we want from our health service, and how it is going to paid for. What we don’t need is being told how to do our job when we are more aware than anyone else of the shortcomings of general practice.
Dr Robert Bennett
Oxford

• I was a GP partner until I left at the age of 53. My wife was a GP partner until she left at the age of 49. The stresses of trying to cope with ever-increasing demand with ever-tighter finances proved intolerable. Most receptionists are polite and professional but cannot create additional appointments with clinicians who already have a full workload from the moment they arrive at work to the moment they leave. I would suggest Mary Dejevesky arranges to spend time observing the situation in a medical practice. If she is then able to offer constructive criticism, I am sure it would be welcomed.
Dr Paul Cassidy
Huddersfield

• I read with interest Mary Dejevsky’s column on the difficulties of getting an appointment with “your” GP. Although prior to the 2004 contract individual GP partners were responsible for a registered list of patients, the new contract gave the practice responsibility for a registered population. There has always been a tension between access, continuity and cost. Over the last 10 years, with the shift towards a consumer society, demand for instant access has been greater than for continuity, eroding the central relationship of a patient with a GP. This has been particularly true of the more vocal majority, often with less need, resulting in political moves to incentivise practices to provide quicker access at the expense of those who need continuity of care. Relationship continuity with your GP is important for patient experience, and evidence shows outcomes are improved, particularly in those with complex needs, but in addition it enhances doctor resilience, much needed at a time of workforce crisis with fewer than 25% of new graduates choosing general practice.

In my own practice we have always prioritised continuity and all patients have a named GP. In order to continue to prioritise continuity but still manage increasing demand for access, as well as an increasingly part-time workforce, we have introduced small teams so that if the patient’s named GP is not available the patient sees only one or two other GPs.

GPs have worked out for themselves what is needed, but much is subject to the whims of our political masters, out of our control. The politicians are recognising the importance of continuity, hence the introduction of a named GP for over 75s, and from April 2015, for every patient. I welcome wholeheartedly a return to placing continuity at the heart of primary care, but there will continue to be a tension between access and continuity unless more resources, both in term of money and GPs, are found.
Dr Naureen Bhatti
London

• Mary Dejevsky has misunderstood the information that the Care Quality Commission has published for every NHS GP practice in England. She discovered that a local practice’s “overall score was a presentable five out of six”. For each GP practice, the CQC combines 38 indicators into an overall score. It then uses this to assign a practice into one of six priority bands for inspection. Band 1 is the highest risk and Band 6 the lowest. A practice’s priority band for inspection isn’t an “overall score” and shouldn’t be interpreted as such.
Dr Alex May
Manchester

• I must be lucky where in live, in a Merseyside village: I can nearly always get an appointment on the day I call (if I phone at 8:30am), the staff are pleasant, and I have no problem with repeat prescriptions. But for those who aren’t so lucky, aren’t they being defrauded? GPs are paid per head, so if a practice reaches a situation where it can’t offer an appointment, the GPs need to work longer shifts. It’s as simple as that.
David Garner
Southport, Lancashire

• Like Mary Dejevsky’s husband, I have a long-term condition – and yes, continuity does matter. Yet it can take two to three weeks to obtain an appointment with the doctor with whom I am registered. If I don’t care for that, I can join the telephone free-for-all on the dot of 8am to obtain an appointment with a newly employed salaried doctor I have never heard of. Even this has taken, on one occasion, almost 20 minutes of constantly re-dialling.

My wife has to work abroad for her company from Monday to Thursday, so Friday is her only opportunity for an appointment. She was recently offered one four weeks in advance – and not even with the doctor of her choice.Why should we be denied adequate healthcare because of the failings of our local GP practice?
Rob Stubbs
Wirral, Merseyside

• Perhaps Mary Dejevsky should just change her doctor. My local practice cannot be the only one where one can see the doctor of choice, phone for an appointment whenever convenient, discuss possibilities with a practice nurse or a friendly, knowledgeable, smiling receptionist. Any matters of practice that cause problems can be discussed at a patient participation group. It is great. Don’t damn all GP surgeries because of your personal bad experience: find a new practice.
Corinne Haynes
Nottingham

We write in response to your article about Andy Miller’s legal action against the Daily Mail (Media, 14 November). While we did not comment before publication, we now wish to draw some errors to your attention.

The overall thrust of your article was that the Mail had unreasonably dragged its feet when it could have resolved matters quickly and simply without recourse to the law. We dispute that interpretation.

It is wrong to suggest that Mr Miller initially only asked for an apology and modest legal costs. In fact he always sought damages, and indeed early on was seeking £200,000 – over three times what he was eventually awarded.

Associated always accepted that the article contained an inaccuracy, offered to correct it and made an offer of damages and costs. This was rejected by Mr Miller, who, using a no-win no-fee arrangement and the iniquitous After the Event insurance – in which the premium is only ever paid by the defendant if they lose – embarked on his legal case.

Associated has not appealed against several judgments in Mr Miller’s favour, rather it appealed the initial high court judgment, lost that appeal before the court of appeal and most recently was refused permission to appeal by the supreme court.

The legal action has to date taken five years, not six, since the Daily Mail were first notified by Mr Miller of his claim in July 2009 and we dispute that the costs bill would be anything like £3m.

The costs of this case have been grossly inflated by a punitively unfair system under which, through 100% success fees and ATE insurance, defendants’ costs are trebled, while claimants take no financial risk and have little incentive to settle.

In a case involving damages of £65,000, such huge sums should be of considerable concern to the entire newspaper industry, including the Guardian.
Liz Hartley
Head of editorial legal services, The Daily Mail

Sir, The appalling and brutal murders carried out in a synagogue in Jerusalem during morning prayers this week (“Deaths push Jerusalem to brink of holy war”, Nov 19) are to be condemned in the strongest possible terms. The desecration of the sacred, taking life in a house of prayer, is the absolute antithesis of faith and of what we stand for. This attack on people at prayer is yet another example from across the globe of violence in the name of religion, which undermines religious freedom. We appeal to the believers of all traditions to denounce such attacks wherever in our world they take place and to call for an end to religiously motivated violence.

The Most Rev Justin Welby Archbishop of Canterbury
Ephraim Mirvis Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth
Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra

Sir, There is, rightly, outrage at the synagogue massacre; there should also be outrage at Benjamin Netanyahu’s response, which will ensure the cycles of “getting even” go on. It seems we are lacking a statesman capable not only of halting this spiral of violence but even understanding it.

Dominic Kirkham
Manchester

Sir, Foreign secretary Philip Hammond calls for peace between the Palestinians and the Jews. Surely he should be calling for peace between Palestinians and Israelis, whether the Israelis be Jewish, Druze, Christian, Bahá’í or indeed Muslim. The tragedy is that a separate state called Palestine would not have such a variety of believers.

Tamara Selig
Stanmore, Middx

Sir, I have found that when someone shouts at me, shouting back rarely makes things better. My daughter is in Israel at present. I would feel more confident about her safety if the Israeli government took a more measured approach to the inexcusable terrorist murders.

James Goldman
London NW4

Sir, Thousands of Israelis, both Jews and Muslims, including the president and heads of both religions, attended the funeral of Zidan Saif, the Druze policeman killed in the attack. In this deeply conflicted part of the Middle East where the positions of the Arab Muslim and Israeli Jewish parties appear intractable, the Druze, a Muslim community living in Israel, should be seen as a model of cooperation on which to build.

Dr R Rosenfelder
London NW6

Sir, Your correspondent Catherine Philp puts the cart before the horse (“Jerusalem braced for holy war”, Nov 20). The conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours did not begin as “territorial and political,” now “morphing into religious war.” Its origins were always fundamentally religious in nature — the notion of Jewish self-determination in any part of the “Dar el-Islam” [The House of Islam] being a challenge to Islamic jurisprudence.
Israel’s chief rabbinate may have forbidden Jews from entering the Temple Mount, but other rabbis have ruled differently. In any case, it is for each individual Jew to make up his or her mind on this issue. If Christians and Moslems can pray at this site, why not Jews?

Professor Geoffrey Alderman
University of Buckingham

Sir, It is 20 years since Baruch Goldstein slaughtered 29 Muslims and wounded 125 others as the prayed in the Mosque of Abraham in Hebron. His house was not demolished and though some of his supporters in the extreme right-wing Meir Kahane group were briefly held, it was the Palestinians of Hebron who were punished for this atrocity: their movements became ever more restricted, and half their mosque was converted into a synagogue.
As we rush to condemn those who have applauded the synagogue attack in Jerusalem, let us remember that Goldstein’s grave became a place of pilgrimage for Israeli settlers — more than 10,000 visited it before it was demolished by the Israeli government.

Brigid Waddams
Batcombe, Somerset

Sir, We welcome the government’s leadership in announcing that it will pledge £720 million to the Green Climate Fund. This new UN fund will channel finance to help developing countries adapt to the effects of a changing climate and invest in sustainable development.

Our organisations see first-hand how urgently this money is needed to help the poorest and most vulnerable people protect themselves from changing climate — which is already disrupting harvests. The need to support at-risk communities and habitats will intensify if emissions are not urgently reduced.

The UK joins countries including France, Germany, Japan and the US in making a significant pledge to the fund. This start-up money paves the way for a global climate agreement next year. However, if the Green Climate Fund is to fulfil its vital role, we urge all governments to continue to honour their commitments and further strengthen their ambition.

Chris Bain
Director, Cafod

Loretta Minghella
Chief executive, Christian Aid

Mark Goldring
Chief executive, Oxfam

David Bull
Executive director, Unicef UK

David Nussbaum
Chief executive, WWF-UK

Sir, Greg Hurst (“Textbook case of sloppy work” Nov 20) unfairly represents teachers as “preparing worksheets rather than refining their teaching and planning stimulating lessons”. Most teachers discover very quickly that textbooks should be used alongside a variety of resources and activities. This does include worksheets, but very rarely in productive classrooms is this the only method employed.

Liam Morgan
Head of history, Shiplake College

Sir, I agree with Libby Purves (“There is no justice for those falsely accused of abuse”, Nov 20). Between 2007 and 2010 I was one of a three-person team of barristers employed by the Crown Prosecution Service in London as Specialist Rape Advocates. Our role was to provide pre-charge advice to the police in cases of sex abuse and rape and to take cases to trial once we had sanctioned charges. The idea was that the police would have one person dealing with their case, which was intended to support and reassure complainants while ensuring that weak cases were not prosecuted. Sadly, we were not deemed to be cost effective and the unit was disbanded. The police and prosecution agencies need to work together to ensure that complainants feel free to speak out but also to ensure that any person accused of such a crime has his or her side of events investigated too. It serves no one to allow weak cases to come to court and in my opinion causes further harm and distress to vulnerable victims. We need a criminal justice system that treats complainants and the accused fairly. We also to debate on how we can fund this so that the police have the training and resources to carry out investigations thoroughly and the CPS has the expertise necessary to ensure that weak cases are not put before a jury in the first place.
Sarah Le Foe
London SW6

Sir, The report (“‘You wonder if it will ever end’, says head cleared of child rape”, Nov 20) was unsettling in its description of howJames Bird and his family had suffered as a result of an abuse allegation prior to his acquittal. What was more unsettling was the comment by “a CPS spokesman” that “it was important to distinguish between evidence that a person had lied about allegations, and a jury deciding evidence was not strong enough for a conviction”.

So what happened to the principle of innocent until proved guilty? Until we have a “not proven” verdict, it would be best that (anonymous) CPS bureaucrats adhered to this principle and even, perhaps, accept that they are capable of mistakes.
Richard Rigby
Long Melford, Suffolk

Sir, Libby Purves draws readers’ attention to the effect of false allegations of sexual abuse on the lives of the accused and their families. Sadly false accusations of sexual abuse, domestic violence and drug abuse are rife during divorce proceedings in the UK Family Court. They waste court time, cause damage to already vulnerable children and are costly to defend, both emotionally and financially. The perpetrator is rarely penalised by the court and cannot be named.

Family Court reform is long overdue. The perpetrator of such serious perjury should be “named and shamed” at the conclusion of the case and costs awarded to the accused.

This might dissuade divorcing couples from resorting to serious false allegations and allow the Family Court to focus on protecting genuinely “at risk” children.
Rita Kubiak
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warks

Sir, Although it is appalling that abused children were not always believed in the past, the pendulum is swinging too far in the other direction.

I was recently in a dentist’s waiting room, alone, reading a magazine. A mother and her daughter came out of the treatment room. The woman went to pay and the child wandered into the waiting room. I looked up, said hello, and went on reading. The child ran back to her mother and I heard her say “Mummy, that lady asked me if I wanted some sweets but I said no.” The woman then told her she was a very good girl.

Had I been an elderly man, and in another setting, the outcome could have been very different.

Elizabeth Clarke
Sheffield

Sir, Libby Purves draws attention to the consequences of our focus on the predominance of “victims”. It would appear that an allegation of sexual assault amounts to a statement of fact, ie, the facts are as the “victim” states them to be. It is an inconvenient fact that the allegation might be open to interpretation, unsupported by evidence and, experience tells us, could be a lie. It is dangerous to make the “victims” views the sole arbiter of action,which seems to be the current trend.
Jim Howard
Newton Abbot, Devon

Sir, How times have changed (“Bring in law to protect under-12s home alone”, Nov 15). I was left alone in our house in Byker, Newcastle upon Tyne, just after the war when I was aged 6-8 years. I had my little dog, Rex, with me. Once I played with a lighted newspaper and a towel over the fire caught light. Sometimes I sat in a corner shop doorway with another lad until the pubs closed; we were safe as houses. I think.
Bill Oxley
Appleton, Warrington