Niles Names Street For Polish Artist; Tarnow Mayor To Bring Tribute

Both Poles and Americans are honoring the late Wojciech Seweryn, a Polish-born Chicago sculptor who created Niles' dramatic gray granite Katyn memorial, in two separate but related developments.

On Tuesday, Niles trustees voted to rename a portion of Milwaukee Avenue near the  memorial as Wojciech M. Seweryn Memorial Road. In addition, the mayors of Niles and Tarnow, Poland, recently made plans for Tarnow Mayor Ryszard Scigala to present a placque honoring Seweryn, a Tarnow native, at a Sept. 25 ceremony. 

Monument was Seweryn's life's work

"Wojciech spent 10 years designing this monument," said Andrew Wywrot, a Niles resident who is active in the Polish American community and helped coordinate the efforts honoring Seweryn. 

"He said to his daughter, 'if I build this monument, I can die in peace,' Wywrot noted.

In fact, Seweryn died in the April 2010 plane crash that also killed Poland's president and other top officials as they flew to Smolensk, Russia to honor the 20,000 Polish victims of the Katyn massacre on the 70th anniversary of that 1940 tragedy. 

Poland reaches out to Niles

About a year ago, a U.S. State Department official contacted Wywrot with information that Ryszard Scigala, the mayor of Tarnow, Poland, wanted to place a plaque on the Katyn memorial that Seweryn had created in at in Niles. 

Wywrot worked with Scigala, as well as Andrej Brach of the Smolensk/Katyn Committee in Chicago, Niles Mayor Robert Callero and Niles Trustees Andrew Przybylo and Chris Hanusiak, to formulate plans for Scigala to come to Niles for a presentation ceremony.

Callero and Prybylo contacted State Representative John D'Amico, who passed House Joint Resolution 25 on May 27 to designate the portion of Milwaukee Avenue from Albion to Harts Road, Niles, as Wojciech M. Seweryn Memorial Road. State officials will also likely be in attendance when the Tarnow mayor arrives Sept. 25. 

A request two days before dying

Callero read a proclamation at the Aug. 23 Niles village board meeting that said Seweryn, who hailed from Tarnow, spoke with Scigala two days before Seweryn's death and asked him to place a Tarnow commemorative placque on the Katyn monument in Niles.

That will happen on Sept. 25, with the public invited to the ceremony at the Katyn memorial at St. Adalbert's Cemetery. A by-invitation-only reception will follow at White Eagle Banquets across the street. 

What the placque says

The placque which Scigala will place on the monument reads:

In memory of Wojciech Seweryn, a son of Tarnow soil, the author of the Katyn monument in Chicago, tragically dead in the plane crash in Smolensk, Russia.

It's signed by Ryszard Scigala, mayor, and the city of Tarnow.

What this means to Poles

Wojciech Seweryn spent his last hours exercising a great honor. He had been invited to fly with Poland's president, Lech Kazczynski, and other dignitaries, to a commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre when their plane hit the ground in bad weather, killing all aboard.

The event was chilling for Poles worldwide, because the 1940 Katyn massacre represented the Russians' attempt, in the beginning of World War II, to weaken Poland by killing 20,000 of its leaders in many walks of life. To have Poland's top leaders killed in 2010 in the same place, as they arrived to honor those who died in the massacre, was a stunning, painful bookend to the original tragedy.

For the Seweryn family, the accident represented a haunting symmetry; Wojciech's father Mieczyslaw had died in 1940 at Katyn, exactly 70 years before Wojciech died there too. The tie to his father had given Wojciech Seweryn a very personal stake in designing the memorial in Niles' St. Adalbert Cemetery.