Janusz Łukomski

The author of the poems, Janusz Łukomski, was my mother's brother and my godfather. We all lived in Lwow. On the night of June 5-6, 1941, he was arrested by the Soviets and soon murdered in a prison in Zamarstynów - he was 23 years old. He was buried with the other victims in a common pit near the prison wall. The reason for the arrest was unknown to the family, but it is certain that, as a student of the last years of medicine, he helped those in need of medical help, and according to the observations of his immediate family, he was associated with the resistance movement.

At that time, in June 1941, the Russians, leaving Lwow before the Germans, arrested and liquidated about 4,000 Poles - soldiers, policemen and intelligentsia. We do not know whether Janusz's arrest was an action directed at him personally, or whether it was part of this mass murder.

In 1999, after Ukraine was liberated from the Soviet yoke, the bodies of these victims were ceremonially exhumed and placed in a mass grave in the square prepared next to the Łyczakowski cemetery. Unfortunately, on the tombstones here and on the memorial plaque on the prison wall, all surnames, including his, are written in Ukrainian.

Jerzy Remisz

Brampton, On