Jerzy Kozarzewski

Jerzy Kozarzewski - poet, soldier of the National Armed Forces, prisoner of Mauthausen, social activist, founder of the Music Center in Nysa. He was born on October 21, 1913 in Trawniki Lubelskie. On the distaff side, he was the great-grandson of Cyprian Norwid's brother - Ksawery. He spent his childhood in Piotrków Trybunalski and studied at the Warsaw School of Economics. Here he graduated from the gymnasium. Bolesław I the Brave. After graduation, he started working at Zakłady Wydawnicze M. Arct, and then at Zakłady Zbrojeniowe in Stalowa Wola. In September 1939 he was taken prisoner by the Soviets. He escaped from the transport alone. He joined the underground Lizard Union and then the National Armed Forces. During the Warsaw Uprising he was captured and sent to Oświęcim, and then to Mauthausen. After the war, he returned to Poland and re-entered the underground structures of the NSZ. Arrested in October 1945, on August 6, 1946, after a show trial, he was sentenced to double the death penalty. Thanks to Julian Tuwim's intervention at Bolesław Bierut, the death penalty was changed into 10 years in prison by way of grace. After serving his sentence, he moved to Nysa. Initially, he was an employee of the city hospital. In the years 1956–1958 he was the chairman of the presidium of the Parent Committee at the Carolinum Secondary School. In 1957, he founded the Music Center from scratch, at which in the years 1959–1962 there was also a music kindergarten. He began preparations for the adaptation of the historic St. Anna at Rynek Solny to the Music School. He started extramural studies in preparation for the position of director of this emerging institution. Poetry accompanied him throughout his life, but it was not until 1992 that he published his first volume of poems, "The Gift of Everyday", and after his death, he died in 1996, and poems from the war and imprisonment period were found and published in the book "Późne żniwo". In 1992 he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta and the honorary badge "Meritorious for the Nysa Region". In 2002, the concert hall of the 1st and 2nd degree State Music School in Nysa was named after Jerzy Kozarzewski.