Eugeniusz Lokajski

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Eugeniusz Lokajski (before 1938, unknown photographer)
Lokajski with a cat (1944, unknown photographer with Lokajski's camera)

Eugeniusz Zenon Lokajski (born December 14, 1908 in Warsaw , Russian Empire ; died September 25, 1944 in Warsaw) was a Polish athlete and photographer.

Life

Eugeniusz Lokajski was a son of the bronze artist Antoni Lokajski. He attended the Mikołaj Rej High School and in 1924 joined the Warszawianka Sports Club . After graduating from high school in 1928, he studied at the Higher Commercial School in Warsaw. In 1931/32 he did his military service at the ensign school in Zambrów . From 1932 to 1934 he studied sports at the Polish Sports University, founded in 1929 in the Warsaw district of Bielany, and then worked as a sports teacher at his former school and as a trainer.

He was a versatile athlete and had excellent results in several decathlon disciplines. In 1929 he was Polish runner-up in high jump , in 1934 national champion in javelin and pentathlon , in 1935 in javelin, pentathlon and decathlon . At the Universiade in Budapest in 1935 he was second in the pentathlon. In 1936 he threw a Polish record with a javelin of 73.27 m and was part of the Polish Olympic team for the 1936 Summer Olympics . He suffered an injury in the competition and was seventh with a width of 66.37 m. Because of the injury and other illnesses, he had to give up his active career.

Lokajski became a soldier in World War II and was a platoon leader in the 35th Infantry Regiment near Brest, Poland, and was taken prisoner by the Soviets. He escaped in December 1939 and thus escaped the fate of the other officers who were murdered by the Soviets in the Katyn massacre in May 1940 . In addition to his work on Mikołaj-Rej, he ran a small photo shop. Lokajski was also a teacher in the underground schools of the Polish resistance, as the German occupiers had banned Polish sports competitions. His brother Józef Lokajski died as a resistance fighter in Warsaw in 1943 and Eugeniusz Lokajski was sworn in in the Armia Krajowa in January 1944 under the code name "Brok" .

During the 63-day Warsaw Uprising he was assigned to the "Koszta" company as a liaison officer, and in the course of the fighting he was also used as a platoon leader of the company's 2nd platoon. Sub-lieutenant Lokajski was given permission to take photos and film. His footage of the insurgents' capture of the headquarters of the Polish Telephone Company was shown on August 21 in the Palladium cinema , which the Germans had renamed the Helgoland cinema. Lokajski died in the fighting in House 129 on Marszałkowska Street , where he wanted to get photographic material. He was buried in the Powązki cemetery after the liberation of Warsaw .

More than 1200 negatives of individual images saved from Lokajski's photos that his sister Zofia Domańska had saved have been preserved. In 2007 the Warsaw Uprising Museum published a 500-page monograph with 840 recordings, which also includes some pre-war pictures. A street in the Ursynów district is named after him. In 2009 he was posthumously awarded the Polonia Restituta Officer's Cross .

Photographs

  • Władysław Bartoszewski , Zofia Domańska, Bohdan Tomaszewski : Photography z powstania warszawskiego . Warsaw: Gebethner i Ska, 1994
  • Dorota Niemczyk; Marta Surowiec: Brok: Eugeniusz Lokajski, 1908–1944, photo reporter . Warsaw: Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego, 2007

literature

  • Katarzyna Utacka, Grzegorz Hanula: Eugeniusz Lokajski "Brok" (1908–1944): Olympic participant and documentarist of the Warsaw Uprising , in: Diethelm Blecking , Lorenz Peiffer (ed.) Sportsman in the "Century of the Camps". Profiteers, resistors and victims. Göttingen: Die Werkstatt, 2012, pp. 292–298

Web links

Commons : Eugeniusz Lokajski  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eugeniusz Lokajski Olimpijczyk i photographer - Sportowcy dla niepodległej. Retrieved March 22, 2019 (pl-PL).
  2. ^ Seweryn Kruszyński , see Seweryn Kruszynski. In: imdb.com. IMDb, accessed February 4, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Lokajski, Eugeniusz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lokajski, Eugeniusz Zenon (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish athlete and photographer
DATE OF BIRTH December 14, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Warsaw
DATE OF DEATH September 25, 1944
Place of death Warsaw