Radio Free Euope's experimental radio broadcasting began on July 14, 1950, to Romania; to Hungary and Poland on August 4, 1950; and to Bulgaria on August 11, 1950. RFE also broadcast to Albania from late 1950 to September 30, 1953. Full-schedule broadcasts to Romania began on May 1, 1951, and to Hungary in October 1951. On May 1, 1951, Radio Free Europe began broadcasting on medium-wave frequencies from the newly constructed transmitter station, nicknamed “Carola,” at Holzkirchen, south of Munich. The new transmitter, with antenna towers four hundred feet high, was at that time three times more powerful than any medium-wave transmitter in the United States.
The first Polish-language program broadcast from Holzkirchen was on May 3, 1952, at 11:00 a.m.:
Music: Bells, interrupted by fanfares.
Announcer: Radio Free Europe calling—Voice of Free Poland.
Music: Fanfares.
Announcer : Attention! Attention! On our National Day, on the anniversary of the third May Constitution, you will listen to the inaugurating program of our radio station, which will be broadcast daily to our countrymen in Poland. A solemn dedication to this new radio station will take place in a few moments.
Attention! Attention! Our voice will reach you from today on new and more powerful antennae.
Attention! Attention! Poles speak to Poles.
We speak to our brothers in Poland thanks to the American National Committee for a Free Europe.
Harold Miller, president of the National Committee for a Free Europe, in a prepared speech translated into Polish, then gave the ideological foundation of RFE broadcasts to Poland, which was to last until the collapse of Communism in 1989:
This superb instrument is to carry the new Voice of Free Poland. Over its pulsing waves, the free Poles hope to make this echo audible to the dauntless people of their enslaved homeland, that you may share with us the knowledge that the people of Poland are not forgotten and that we in America and in the West have faith in Poland and in the certainty of her ultimate victory.
The Polish Station of Radio Free Europe, organized by the National Committee for a Free Europe, is a station run by Poles for their countrymen. It aims at piercing the Iron Curtain with words of truth. It does not propose to tell the people of Poland what to think or what to do. When they know what goes on in the Free World, when they know that their brothers in exile and their friends in the West have not forgotten them, they will be able to draw their own conclusion and form their own ideas.
For more information, see
