Juliusz Pol, Jerzy Pol, wife and Idalia Pol

A photograph of the family members of Marek Stanisław Pol (1847-1911), the youngest child of Wincenty Pol and Kornelia née Olszewska, was donated to the branch of the Wincenty Pol Manor Museum in Lublin in 2005 by the poet’s great-great-granddaughter, Danuta Słomińska née Chybowski.

The photo, taken in 1894, depicts the poet’s three grandsons and Zofia Czerwińska – the mother of the youngest of them, then six-year-old Jerzy Marian (1888-1935). They were photographed sitting on a park bench. On the left, we see Juliusz Pol (1878-1921) just before his departure for studies in Munich in the private painting studio of professor Azbé, which he continued later on at the Krakow School of Fine Arts (in 1900 renamed as the Academy of Fine Arts) under the supervision of Juliusz Umrzyski, Józef Mehoffer, Julian Fałat and Leon Wyczółkowski. His most valuable and significant compositions were created in Krakow. He also worked as a drawing teacher, for a short period also in Kraśnik grammar school (1921). His younger sister, Idalia (1882-1971), graduated from the Secondary School of the Benedictine Nuns of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in Lviv, worked as a teacher and a certified nurse. Next to Zofia Czerwińska, we see her son Jerzy Pol, a future graduate of the School of Economics in Drohobycz, owner of a bookstore in Tarnopol, married to Zofia née Żyborscy (1890-1972), who on December 2nd, 1972, participated in the opening of the museum – The Wincenty Pol Manor House in Lublin. During World War I, Jerzy served in the Austrian army in field artillery on the front line in the Italian theatre. In 1930, as an officer of the Polish army with the rank of major, he was transferred from Kraków to Lublin to the position of the chief of Weapons Depot No. 2. He was the father of Jadwiga (1911-2000) and Zbigniew Jerzy Michał (1914-1994). He erected a two-story tenement house at Weteranów Street in Lublin, which until 2011 was in the possession of his descendants.

Grażyna Połuszejko