Bortnowski, Wladyslaw, General
(Nov. 12, 1891 - Nov. 22, 1966)
Polish combatantIt's difficult to imagine how quickly General Wladyslaw Bortnowski is forgotten. Had he not left some of his important papers to the Pilsudski Institute of America in New York, chances are that Janusz Cisek, who came from Poland to work there in 1989, would not have paid much attention to the name. He wrote a short biography of General Bortnowski in Polish for Encyklopedia Polskiej Emigracji i Polonii in 2003, and I am indebted to Peter J. Obst for an English translation.
Wladyslaw Bortnowski first showed interest in the Polish army in his birthplace. Radom, Poland, where Jozef Pilsudski organized a rifle group at his school. When Poland entered the First World War, he served in the First Brigade of the Polish Legion until 1917 when he was interned in Beniaminow for not taking a loyalty oath. He was released the following year and was with the Polish Army that liberated Lwow. Then he took part in an expedition to Lithuania. By 1920 he was chief of staff of the 3rd Polish Army.
When German troops invaded Poland in 1939, Bortnowski, then a brigadier general and commanding officer of the Pomorze Army, was captured. He was a prisoner of war from September 21, 1939, to April 29, 1945, when he was liberated by the U.S. 12th Army. Later, in August, when the same army entered Paris, General Bortnowski found refuge in the French capital. Little by little the Polish combatants in Paris, led by General Kazimierz Sosnkowski in 1944, moved to Canada and formed an association of combatants. Bortnowski contacted the leader and spent a little time in Canada and New York. Early in 1946 he settled in London, England, where he worked as a carpenter, turner, wood sorter, physical therapist and male nurse in a mental institution for Polish soldiers.
It was while he was in London that Poles set up a non-profit organization to continue the work of the Institute for Research in the Modern History of Poland, founded in Warsaw in 1923, which changed its name in 1936, shortly after the death of Marshal Pilsudski, to the Pilsudski Institute. Bortnowski was a pillar of the Pilsudski Institute in London until he moved to New York in May 1954 and joined the Pilsudski Institute in America.
The organization in New York was four years older than the one in London. None of the founders, including Francis Januszewski, publisher of the Polish Daily News in Detroit and Maximilian Wegrzynek, publisher of Nowy Swiat (Polish Morning World) in New York, were still active in it when General Bortnowski joined. The leadership changed often. The fifth person to serve as president of the research institute, General Bortnowski, was preceded and followed by Henryk Korab-Janiewicz. He held the office from July 1961 to March 17, 1962. Because he was a recipient of the Virtuti Militari medal, he attracted many Polish veterans to the Pilsudski Institute.
Owing to poor eyesight, he was not able to keep up with the Pilsudski Institute and Group 51 of the Polish Combatants Association in Jersey City. It was difficult for him to get out of his home in Sea Cliff, a village in Nassau County, Long Island. When he died, the Polish Combatants buried him in a cemetery with other Polish heroes at Jasna Gora, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
From: Edward Pinkowski (2009)