Jerzy Tomaszewski

Jerzy Tomaszewski (1924 – 26 January 2016), nom de guerre Jur, was a Polish World War II photographer, artist, and reporter, awarded the Order of Polonia Restituta by President Lech Kaczyński.

Tomaszewski is best known for the roughly 1,000 photographs of the Warsaw Uprising which he took in 1944. He was assigned by the Polish underground Bureau of Information and Propaganda (BIP) to document the battle. He photographed in the districts of Powiśle, Śródmieście and Wola, until he was wounded on 6 September 1944. The last photo he took was of the several bodies lying in the street of the Old Town, without signs of life.

Life Tomaszewski completed a clandestine course in photography in Warsaw in 1940 as a 16-year-old boy. He was transferred by the Armia Krajowa to Studio "Fotoris" in downtown Warsaw, which was a popular German photo-processing shop; a Polish underground cell was already there. Tomaszewski escaped along with Mieczysław Kucharski. The studio manager, engineer Andrzej Honowski was ambushed and killed in the struggle with Gestapo. of the mass murder of Jews in the village of Ivanhorod by the SS.

Jerzy Tomaszewski is the brother of artist Stanisław Miedza-Tomaszewski (also a member of the Polish resistance in World War II).

Selected works

Notes and references

Jerzy Tomaszewski: Epizody Powstania Warszawskiego (Episodes of the Warsaw Uprising). Warsaw: Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1979