Nazwisko: Wiśniowski

[Wisniowski_Stefan]

Zgłaszam swoją obecność: WIŚNIOWSKI, Stefan, syn Zbigniewa, wnuk Lucjana, a prawnuk Romana. Urodzony w Kanadzie a zamieszkały w Australii, pozwalam sobie zamieścić resztę historii w języku angielskim. Mogę przetłumaczyć, jeśli ktoś by tak wolał.
Pozdrawiam serdecznie!

WIŚNIOWSKI Roman (1845-1912).
Roman, son of Jan Wiśniowski, continued the family tradition of freedom fighting by participating in the 1863 Polish Uprising against the Russian occupation. After the Uprising, Roman was taken prisoner by the Russians to Irkutsk in Siberia. He escaped from custody, and changed his last name to Tuczyński to avoid detection.

Between 1864 and 1877, Roman married Helena Piasecka, a daughter of Count (Chrabia) Piasecki. They bought an estate in the town of Słupca, in Russian-occupied territory to the west of Warsaw and just east of the border with the German-occupied Polish province of Poznań. There, they acquired land holdings in Słupca, Pyzdry (on the Warta river) and Strzałkowo (a border town between Russian Poland and German Poland).

Roman built up a considerable estate, consisting of a manor house, 3 villages, a peat mine, and a freight haulage business with 20 horse-drawn furgons (baggage wagons) partaking in the cross-border trade between the German and Russian empires.

Living as the Tuczyński family, Roman and Helena had three children: Kazimiera (1878 – 1944), Władysław (188? – 1918), and Lucjan Wiśniowski (16 December 1888 – 6 February 1942). The Russians discovered that Tuczyński was really the escaped rebel Wiśniowski. The estate was confiscated by the Russians, but Roman managed to flee with Helena and the children to Dresden – which was in Germany proper, though at that time was half Polish in its population.

In 1907, Roman discovered that Prince Jabłonowski was selling off his lands in Austrian-ruled Polish Galicia to repay gambling debts. Roman purchased the estate of "Czereszenki" – one kilometre north of Wojniłów, near Kałusz in the region of Stanisławów (now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine).

WIŚNIOWSKI Lucjan (16 December 1888 – 6 February 1942).
Lucjan was born in Słupca, and after his family fled to Dresden, Germany, from the Russians he accompanied them to Wojniłów in 1907. There he married Apolonia Kunysz in November of 1911 or 1912. Apolonia was born on 6 February 1894 at Ludwikówka, near Wojniłów. Their first child, Stanisława Helena, was born at Wojniłów on 8 July 1913. Lucjan was interned during the First World War (1914-1918) as an enemy Russian citizen by the Austrians. After the war he returned to Wojniłów, where he and Apolonia had their second child – Janina on 8 March 1919.

After the Soviet-Polish War of 1920 settled newly-independent Poland’s frontiers, Lucjan purchased land from the Polish government in the new settlement of Warszawka, just north of Brody in Tarnopol province. The land for this settlement had been subdivided by the government from an estate abandoned during the war, and it was one of the scores of settlements established in the eastern Kresy territories – many of which were populated by veterans of the war. This area had been "reclaimed" from Austrian Galicia by a reborn Poland after World War 1. Prior to its occupation by the Austrian Empire, this had been a part of Poland for several centuries and had served as Europe's bulwark against the Turkish and Tatar armies of the east. By 1919, it had become home to a mixed community of Poles, Ukrainians and Jews.

It was here that their third child, Władysława Maria, was born on 7 August 1921, in a temporary shelter as their new house had not yet been completed. As the family settled into their new life, more children followed:
- Marysia (died as baby in 1922 or 1923)
- Kazimiera Bolesława, born on 24 April 1924
- Mieczysław Józef, born on 6 January 1926
- Apolonia Bronislawa (Broncia), born on 9 February 1928
- Wacław, born in April or May 1930, and surviving only 6 weeks
- Zbigniew Wacław, born on 14 April 1931.

Lucjan was arrested by the Soviets in December 1939, and released from jail just a few days before the entire family was deported – in the early morning hours of Saturday, 10 February 1940. The family was taken, with hundreds of thousands of other Polish citizens, to the arctic wilds of northern Russia, where they were held captive and forced to perform hard labour in a Soviet timber camp called Siencybino in the Konosha district in Archangel oblast.

The family was finally liberated on 29 December 1941, following a general amnesty that the Polish government-in-exile negotiated with the USSR following the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union. The family travelled south to the newly-forming Polish Army that was set up under the terms of the amnesty agreement. It was during this harsh train journey, in early January 1942, that Lucjan became separated from the rest of the family at the Vologda train station while acquiring food for them. Fearful of losing the family (he had all their necessary travel and food documents) Lucjan jumped on the next train south, hanging on to the carriage with his hands, now moistened from the steaming pot of soup. Over the following days, as he grimly hung on to the train as it hurtled south, his hands became frozen and his fingers got frostbite. When his hands were finally treated by a Russian nurse, her unsterilised implements caused an infection which eventually took his life on 6 February 1942, Apolonia’s 46th birthday.

The family continued on to Aktiubinsk in Kazakhstan, and on 12 March 1942 Zbigniew joined the newly forming Polish army under General Anders in Szachryzjabs, Uzbekistan USSR (near Kitab train station). Though he was 11, Zbigniew claimed that he was 12 to get in. For the first time, he learned his full name and the boy formerly known by his middle name of Wacław formally took on his first name of Zbigniew.

WIŚNIOWSKI Zbigniew Wacław (14 April 1931 – 28 October 2013)
Zbigniew was born in Poland at osada Warszawka, near Brody near Lwów. The area was devastated in World War II by the Germans and Russians. His area fell under Russian Rule, so on the 10th of February, 1940, at 5:00 in the morning, his family was pulled out of their beds into the cold and then on to Siberia. All of their property was confiscated. In USSR, due to the poor living conditions, his brother Miecio, then 15 years old, became blind. One of the sisters contracted T.B. and in 1942 died. His father and sisters had to work as lumberjacks. Wladzia had her spine crushed by a tree. Lucjan died on the way out of Russia to freedom while trying to save the family. At the age of 11, Zbigniew joined a newly forming Polish army as a boy soldier. Six years later, as the war was over, he joined the British army, where he survived the 18 months service with the UN Forces in the Korean War and another 2 years in the jungle of " Malayan emergency" service.

At the end of his military service, he ended up as an Electrical Engineer with an electronics background. In 1957, he arrived in Montreal, Canada and married Maria Żytkowicz, daughter of an officer in the 3rd Carpathian Rifles of the Polish 2nd Corps. They had 4 children, including me, Stefan in 1960. After working as an architect and MBA in Montreal and Toronto, I moved to Sydney Australia in 1995, where I live today. In 2001 I founded the Kresy-Siberia Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/KresySiberiaGroup and Virtual Museum www.Kresy-Siberia.org, both dedicated to research, recognise and remember Poland’s citizens fighting for survival and freedom in eastern Poland and in forced exile during WW2.

[AndrzejG]

Ja mam bardzo dobrego znajomego o nazwisku Wiśniowski mieszka w Skierniewicach, ale chyba coś kiedyś o tym mówił że nie są rdzennymi mieszkańcami Skierniewic.
Andrzej.