Roman Aftanazy

Roman Aftanazy was born into the family of Jan, a railway official and his wife Olimpia, née Kraśnik. Initially the family name was Aftanaziw.[1][2] Having completed his primary education in the town of Morszyn, in what is now the Lviv Oblast of today's Ukraine, he attended the Marshal Jozef Pilsudski state secondary school in Stryj which he left in 1935.[3] That year he went on to the Jan Kazimierz University in Lwów, to study history. His formal studies were interrupted by the Outbreak of World War II. Nevertheless, he continued a programme of covert studies under the auspices of the underground University of Lwow and completed his degree in 1942.[4] His master's degree in history was not formally granted until 1946 by the Humanities Faculty of the University of Wrocław, for a thesis, entitled Schooling in Congress Poland 1807–1815, which he had written before the war under the supervision of Stanisław Łempicki.[5]

From January 1940 he was initially employed as a manual worker in the administration of Morszyn Spa, but later assumed an office role. From April 1944 he worked in the library of the National Ossolineum Institute in Lwów, initially as a volunteer, and from August that year as a full-time librarian. In spring 1944, he participated in the transfer of the collections to the crypt of the Dominican Church in Lwów as a safeguarding measure against enemy bombardment.[6]

In January 1945 he was arrested as part of the ethnic purging action against the Polish population of Lwów, on the charge of Anti-Soviet agitation and detained in the Łącki Street prison in Lwów. He was released after intensive interrogations in May and was able to return to his post in the library.[7] On his return he took part in the selection of items that were to be transported to German-occupied Western Poland. He assisted Mieczysław Gębarowicz and the Dominican Fathers in the covert preparation of a rescue transport to Poland of uncatalogued collections of the Ossolineum.[8]

In April 1946 he left Lwów as part of the Population exchange between Poland and Soviet Ukraine and settled in Wrocław. There, from June 1946, he was employed in the University Library. In July 1946 he was a member of the delegation that went to receive in Przemyśl those items of the Ossolineum collections that were "granted" to Poland, as well as collections from certain other museums in Lwów and Kiev. He went on a similar mission in March 1947.[9] In May 1948 he passed an examination that gave him access to the first rank of the Polish state library service, and awarded him employment from June 1948 in the now transferred Ossolineum Institute and its ZNiO library in Wrocław, while formally still on the roll of the University Library till October of that year.[10]

In January 1949 he was appointed curator of the ZNiO library. From April 1949 he managed the acquisitions and completion of collections, a post he retained until November 1981. He achieved his personal aim by the mid-1970s, in so far as gathering all the most important materials and publications extant in 1939. This attainment put the standing of the Ossolineum Library on a par with the collections of the Polish National Library, Biblioteka Narodowa and that of the Jagiellonian Library, Biblioteka Jagiellońska.[11]

In 1982 he was honoured with a Festschrift entitled, Włodzimierz Roman Aftanazy w Bibliotece Ossolineum. Until the end of 1987 he continued to work full-time in the Department of Acquisitions.[12] Roman Aftanazy had no issue and never married.

He died on 7 June 2004 in Wrocław. He was buried in the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw.[13]

The collections he gathered are now kept in the "Manuscript and Graphics Cabinet" of the ZNiO Library in Wrocław.[14]

• Biographies of Emanuel Małyński and Wacław Mańkowski in the Polish Biographical Dictionary (1974)
• Materiały do dziejów rezydencji. published by Instytut Sztuki PAN, 1986-1994 (11 volumes in 22 bound copies)
• Dzieje rezydencji na dawnych kresach Rzeczypospolitej. Wydawnictwo Ossolineum, Wrocław 1991-1997

• Honorary membership of the Polish Association of Conservators (1987)
• Lower Silesia Prize (1987)[24]
• Prize awarded by the Minister of Culture and the Arts and by the Association of Conservators (1990)
• Academic Prize from the Polish Academy of Learning (1990)
• Prize from Polish Association of Science Abroad, London (1990)
• The Jerzy Łojka Foundation Prize from the Jozef Pilsudski Institute in America, New York (1993)
• Wrocław City Council Prize (1993)
• Gold Medal to the Custodian of Places of National Memory from the Council for the Protection of the Memory of Battles and Martyrdom (1993) [25]
• The Włodzimierz Pietrzak Prize (1994)
• Prize from the Foundation for Polish Education (1994)[26]
• Władysław and Nelli Turzański Foundation Prize (1995)
• The „Przegląd Wschodni” (Eastern Review) Prize (1995)
• Honorary membership of the Polish Landowners Association (1998)[27]
• Honorary Doctorate from the Independent Bielorussian College in Minsk (2000)
• Posthumous Guardian of National Memory Prize (2014)[28]

• Gold Cross of Merit (1956)
• Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (Krzyż Kawalerski Orderu Odrodzenia Polski)
• Commander's Cross (3rd class) (12 December 1994, decree by President Lech Walesa, citation: In honour of outstanding service to the Nation's culture[29]

• Andrzej Kwilecki (2007). Silva rerum. Ludzie – instytucje – wydarzenia. Zapiski i wspomnienia. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie. ISBN 9788371774669.
• Juzwenko, Adolf. Ed. (2016). Kustosz i Samotnik. Tom poświęcony pamięci Romana Aftanazego. Wrocław: Seria Osso Wczoraj i Dziś. ISBN 978-83-65588-06-7.
• Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland (in Polish)

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• Biography in Polish on the FNP page
• Tadeusz Kukiz – Roman Aftanazy
• Ossolineum biography of Aftanazy