Family

Roots

Radosław Sikorski’s grandfather, Kazimierz Paszkiewicz was a schoolmaster in Łochowo near Bydgoszcz. His grandfather’s elder brother, Stefan Paszkiewicz fought in the Wielkopolska Uprising and the Polish-Bolshevik war. His grandmother’s brother, Roman Zientarski, was a priest who was held prisoner at concentration camps in Dachau and Buchenwald. Her other brother, Władysław Zientarski, who was also a priest, was the curator of the Archdiocese archives in Gniezno.

Family

Parents, Jan and Teresa (née Paszkiewicz), worked as design engineers at offices of design in Bydgoszcz. They were both Solidarity activists – his father presided over his company branch of the Solidarity Trade Union, whilst his mother gathered money for the underground Solidarity movement during Poland’s period under martial law. They are both retired and live in Chobielin near Bydgoszcz.

He is married to Anne Applebaum, the American journalist and writer. She graduated from Yale University and was a Marshall Scholar at the London School of Economics, completing her postgraduate studies at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford. She has published two books: a travelogue entitled “Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe” and “Gulag: A History”. “Gulag” won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 2004 and Britain’s Duff-Cooper Prize. She was the Foreign and Deputy Editor of the Spectator magazine in London and the Political Editor of the London’s Evening Standard. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The International Herald Tribune, Foreign Affairs, The Weekly Standard, The Independent and The Guardian. She is a former member of the Washington Post editorial board, and since 2009 has worked as a columnist for the Washington Post and Slate.

Anne and Radek have two sons, Alexander and Tadeusz. They live in Warsaw and Chobielin near Bydgoszcz.