Jan Nowak-Jezioranski

THE DEATH OF Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, a Polish World War II hero who became a Western Cold War hero, marks the end of an era. Mr. Nowak-Jezioranski, who died Thursday night at age 91, was also known as the "courier from Warsaw," the man whose extraordinary journeys between wartime London and occupied Poland sound now like episodes from spy novels. It was he who informed the Allies of the Polish underground's resistance to the Nazis, and he who told the world of the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943. Later, he took part in the Warsaw uprising against the Germans, which resulted in the deaths of 150,000 of his fellow Poles and the destruction of his city.

But if Mr. Nowak-Jezioranski is a hero of the past, he is also worth remembering in the present. After the war, he became the head of the Polish section of Radio Free Europe, diligently organizing anti-Communist broadcasts for two decades. Indeed, his dogged, long-term and ultimately successful dedication to democracy could almost be a model for those who wish to spread democracy now. Instead of seeking quick solutions, he shaped the perceptions of his compatriots by providing reliable information and a forum for debate, preparing them for democracy when it finally came. Instead of playing politics in Washington, where he lived for most of the last 29 years of his life, he advised successive administrations on how they could best help first dissident Polish democrats and later newly democratic Poland itself. In his last article for The Post in 2002, he wrote a Fourth of July thank-you note to the United States for its support of freedom in his native Poland during his nine decades. Perhaps it is we who should have thanked him for showing us the right way to support freedom, in his country and around the world.