COBI Independence Set 2980

COBI's Independence set is built from 105 blocks and represents a fragment of the Saxon Palace in Warsaw, issued for the centenary of Poland's independence under the Ministry of Culture's Niepodległa programme. A Polish flag is included, along with two soldiers of General Haller's Blue Army with rifles and bayonets, and a collector's figure of Marshal Józef Piłsudski on horseback with a sabre, reviewing a parade.

The fragment in this box is the part that survived

The Saxon Palace was one of Warsaw's great buildings, and after 1918 it housed the General Staff of the Polish Army. In 1925 an arcade at its centre became the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

In December 1944, after the Warsaw Uprising had been crushed, German demolition units destroyed the palace deliberately — part of the systematic levelling of the city that followed. When the charges were fired, three arches of the arcade were left standing.

Whether that was an accident or a decision by whoever set the charges has never been established. What is certain is that the surviving fragment contained the Tomb, and it is still there: three arches, an eternal flame, and a guard mounted around the clock in the middle of an otherwise empty square.

That fragment is what COBI has modelled. It is one of the few structures in Warsaw that is genuinely original rather than rebuilt, and it exists because a demolition was incomplete.

Poland began reconstructing the full palace in the 2020s.

The two armies in the box

Haller's Blue Army was formed in France from Polish volunteers and prisoners of war, named for its French horizon-blue uniforms, and returned to fight for the new republic in 1919. Piłsudski's chestnut mare, Kasztanka, is nearly as well known in Poland as he is.

In the COBI range

Sets 2056 and 2051 are the Great War figure sets, and 2057 the Warsaw Uprising.

Specifications

Pieces: 105 · Figures: 3, including a collector's Piłsudski on horseback · Polish flag included
Model dimensions: 13 × 5.5 × 11.5 cm (5.1 × 2.2 × 4.5 in)