Tadeusz Chciuk-Celt was sent to Poland in December 1945 as the Secretary of the Demobilization Mission, along with Dr. Jozef Retinger, the director of this mission, which distributed many tons of American and British military surplus equipment to Poland. He married Ewa Lovell in Kraków within days of his return, on 19 December 1945. They were both arrested by the UB (Secret Police of the Ministry of Public Security of Poland) in April 1946, and held as prisoners for several months, until the personal intervention of Stanislaw Mikolajczyk secured their release. After that, he worked in Kraków for the Polish Peasants' Party (PSL) until the Communists started cracking down hard. With his young wife and one-year-old daughter Aleksandra, taking only what they could carry, Tadeusz Chciuk-Celt fled Poland in September 1948, not to return for 43 years. Many of his friends and colleagues spent the next eight years in prison in Poland.