Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski

Iwo Pogonowski with model for his design of a hexagonal-base oil platform

Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski (born 3 September 1921 in Lwów, Poland) is a writer and inventor with 50 patents to his credit; a civil and industrial engineer by profession, educated in Poland, Belgium and United States. He is also a non-fiction writer on Polish and European history, author of historical atlases, and lexicographer.

Dictionaries that Pogonowski has compiled include the 1990 Polish-English, English-Polish Standard Dictionary,[1] reprinted in 1993, 1994 and 1997.

Life

After the invasion of Poland in World War II, in December 1939 Pogonowski, aged 18, left Warsaw, Poland with the intention of joining the Polish Armed Forces in the West. He was arrested in Dukla by the German authorities on suspicion of aiming to join the resistance. He was moved between prisons and camps for five years thereafter. Interned at the Krosno, Jasło, and Tarnów prisons among others, he was sent with 500 prisoners to Auschwitz, and from there to Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen several months later. He survived the camps, and was liberated on May 2, 1945.[2] Pogonowski summarized his horrific experiences at the German concentration camps in a three-page article popularized by Richard C. Lukas in his Out of the Inferno.[2] In 1954 he graduated in Civil Engineering at the Catholic University: Institute Superieur de Commerce in Antwerp. He moved to the United States and in the following years worked as project engineer in the oil industry.[3]

Historian and lexicographer

Pogonowski has published an illustrated history of Poland (2000), historical atlases of Poland, and a work on Polish heraldry (2002). His book Poland. An Illustrated History (Hippocrene 2008) was reviewed in The Slavic and East European Journal (2010, vol. 54, no. 1), by Professor Tony H. Lin of the University of California, Berkeley. Lin concluded that, although "not detailed enough for scholars to use as a reference" the book "makes a strong case for anyone that has doubts about Poland's significance in Europe".[4]

Pogonowski's historical work has been praised by M.K. Dziewanowski, whose review of Jews in Poland calls the book a "pioneering attempt [to] 'encompass' Jews within the Polish discourse, a rarity in American scholarship and in the discourse about Jews."[5] Critics and political opponents of his approach to controversial Polish-Jewish aspects of World War II history include Wrobel,[6] and Milewska.[7] Michlic believes him to represent the ethnonationalist trend in historiography.[8]

His journalistic work includes broadcasts for the Polish Radio Maryja[9] and columns for its sister publication, Nasz Dziennik (Our Daily).[10] He has also written columns in the Polish-American biweekly, Gwiazda Polarna.

Pogonowski has compiled several Polish-English, English-Polish dictionaries which have appeared since 1981, including his Unabridged Polish-English Dictionary (3 volumes, New York, Hippocrene Books, 1997; some 100,000 entries) and his Polish-English, English-Polish Standard Dictionary (1985, reprinted 1993, 1994 and 1997).

Publications

Dictionaries

History

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Polish-English, English-Polish Dictionary with Complete Phonetics, by Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, New York, Hippocrene Books, 1990, ISBN 0-87052-882-3, 363 pages.
  2. 1 2 Richard C. Lukas (1989). Out of the Inferno. University Press of Kentucky. pp. 139–42. ISBN 0-8131-1692-9. Retrieved 24 September 2013.
  3. ↑ Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski (2012). "Bio". Homepage. Retrieved 24 September 2013.
  4. ↑ Prof. Tony H. Lin (15 July 2010). "Poland. An Illustrated History by Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski (book review)". Puls Polonii. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
  5. ↑ M.K. Dziewanowski. "Jews in Poland - A Documentary History". Sarmatian Review, April 1997 (Rice University). Retrieved 2010-09-27.
  6. ↑ Piotr Wrobel. "The Massacre in Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: Before, During, and After". Rice University. Retrieved 2010-09-27.
  7. ↑ Monika Milewska. "The Image of Sects in the Polish Ultra-Catholic Press". CESNUR. Retrieved 2010-09-27.
  8. ↑ Joanna B. Michlic (2007). Essay on Antisemitism in Contemporary Poland. Rethinking Poles and Jews: troubled past, brighter future. Robert D. Cherry, Annamaria Orla-Bukowska (Rowman & Littlefield). p. 163. ISBN 978-0-7425-4666-0.
  9. ↑ Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski. "Tło historyczne pogromu kieleckiego" (in Polish). Radio Maryja. Retrieved 2009-06-02.
  10. ↑ Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski. "Dymisja neokonserwatysty" (in Polish). Nasz Dziennik. Retrieved 2009-06-02.
  11. ↑ amazon.com
  12. ↑ amazon.com
  13. ↑ Hippocrene Books

External links

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