Tadeusz Wojnarski was born on 12 September 1922 in Warsaw as a son of Witold, a legal counsel in the Department of Health Service and Eugenia née Bernat. In the II Polish Republic, he managed to enrol in the Tadeusz Rejtan secondary school in Warsaw and become a pupil there but he was not able to take his final examinations due to the outbreak of WWII. He left Warsaw already in the first days of September 1939, escaping the bombings raids suffered by the city. Together with his mother and a younger brother he was evacuated to the south-eastern borderland of the country, remaining completely unaware of the threat approaching from the east. After the Soviet Union had attacked Poland, Wojnarski, who had been dreaming of returning to Warsaw, made an unsuccessful attempt to cross the German-Soviet border on the occupied territory of Poland in January 1940. Arrested by the Russians, first he was sent to prison in Przemyśl and then imprisoned in Odessa, from where he was finally departed to a gulag at Ivdel at the foot of northern Ural Mountains to perform backbreaking work in the Siberian forests. Following the Sikorski-Majski agreement, Wojnarski was released from the gulag (1941), then he enlisted in the Polish Army under General Władysław Anders that was being formed at that time in Namangam (Uzbekistan) to finally leave the Soviet Union as one of the army’s soldiers in 1942. He began his military training in April of the same year in Palestine and next, at the end of the summer, left for Iraq where he finished the Cadets School after a year. On returning to Palestine, he enrolled in a preparatory course for the secondary school examinations. He received his general certificate of secondary education on 26 February 1944. Assigned to the 2nd Carpathian Light Artillery Regiment of the Polish II Corps, he took part in the whole Italian campaign – first in the ranks of corporal, then second-lieutenant. He fought in the Battle of Monte Cassino, took part in the liberation of Ancona, the breaking of the Gothic Front, in the fights in the Emilian Apennines and at the Battle of Bologna. After the war, Wojnarski, who had exhibited artistic skills since his school days and who had never parted (even at the front-lines) with his drawing and painting equipment, started the studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome (Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma). He studied there under the supervision of Prof. Amerigo Bartoli. At that time, another important artistic experience for young Wojnarski was also his contacts with Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, a renowned painter and pedagogue who was a supervisor of Polish soldier-artists in Rome and with Aleksander Werner. Disappointed by breach of faith on the side of the Allies, Wojnarski demobilized before the Polish II Corps was moved to England and left Italy for Spain towards the end of 1946 on a scholarship programme Pax Roman to study in Spain. In Madrid, he finished studies at the painting department of the Escuela Central de Bellas Artes de San Fernando with the title of professor of drawing (1959). A few years earlier (1951), he married a distant cousin Ewa Zawadyńska, who was living in Switzerland. Soon, they were to have three children: Tadeusz, Teresa and Antoni. Together with his wife, Wojnarski started a travelling marionette theatre, touring towns and villages with their performances in order to make a living for the family. At the turn of 1959 he arrived in Zurich for economic reasons, where he worked for about 10 years as a decorator of shop windows. In a short time, he became a valued creator within the area of decorative design, especially in paper arts. Further, he worked as a teacher of art in senior grades of elementary schools in Zurich, where he developed his own teaching methods and taught painting courses for adults (among others, for the association “Familienherberge” in Bergün or the Polish Museum in Rapperswil). In 1974 he was awarded Zurich and Swiss citizenship. In spite of his numerous obligations and the fact that their family welcomed daughter Elżbieta to the world, Wojnarski was actively involved in the life of the Polish diaspora. He participated in prosocial activities as member of the Zurich group PKS Veritas. Additionally, he was president of the “Polish House” Association in Zurich and of the Cross-organizational Committee. He was an initiator and organizer of numerous events and enterprises of Polish and Polish-Swiss character in Zurich. He staged his own plays and inspired the establishment of a dancing group “Polanie”. Since 1973 he had been assisting in the activities of the Polish Museum in Rapperswil as a visual artists and painter. In the same year he founded and edited “Nasza Gazetka” – a Polish newspaper in Switzerland. As president of the “Polish House” Association, he established a Polish Centre in Zurich – “Polish House”, where Polish cultural and social life focused. As a painter, he created mostly landscapes (mountain views, town alleys, olive groves, inspired mostly by the views in Switzerland, Italy and Spain), even though he did not avoid portraits or religious art. He had multiple exhibitions, among others in the Polish Museum in Rapperswil (1979, 1992). Under the artistic pseudonym Jan Pył, he wrote his memoir from the Siberian times (Stories from Early Youth, 1998, Zurich) and his memories from the time he was a soldier in the years 1942-1946 (Stories from Later Youth – albeit never published). He was decorated with the Cross of Valour, the Cross of Monte Cassino, the Star Medal “for war” and for the “Italian campaign”, the Golden Cross of Merit, the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta and the Anna Godlewska award for lifetime achievement in culture in Switzerland. He died on 7 August 1999 at Zürcher Höhenklinik in Davos-Clavadel.

Translation into English: Adam Kunysz, Chmielów PL