Eugeniusz Niebelski
The Długosz Museum in Sandomierz houses an unparalleled souvenir of this 1879 exile: a birch casket. It is beautiful. The lid opens (it used to have a key), and it smells and ‘reads’ because it has the inscriptions on the top. It is the property of Father Konstanty Piwarski of the Sandomierz diocese, who before the January Rising was parish priest of the Oratorians in Studzianna but was exiled to Siberia by the Tsarist authorities in 1863 because he collected the so-called national tax for the armed underground.
Father Piwarski went through a long exile route: in February 1864, he arrived in Irkutsk, and in March he was sent to work at the steelworks in Petrovsk beyond Lake Baikal; in the summer of 1865, he was sent to Sivkovo, where exiles built barges for Siberian rivers. At the end of 1866, he found himself in Darasun, a settlement rich in spa waters where Benedykt Dybowski and other exiles – with the consent of the authorities – were creating a modern health resort. Dybowski, in his memoirs written later, mentioned Father Piwarski in Darasun: “he was distinguished by his gentleness of character, piety, high patriotism”. The locals called him “holy man”; on holidays he held services in the cure house. In June 1868, he was sent to settle in the village of Tunka (west of Irkutsk), where in the years 1866–1875 the authorities gathered 156 clergymen who had been exiled to Eastern Siberia after the January Uprising. He left Tunka in 1874 and went to Spassk in European Russia. In 1879, he received the aforementioned box as a gift from his fellow exiles in Spassk. In September 1880, he went on “leave” to Poland to visit his mother and family in the vicinity of Odrzywół and was then forced to undergo treatment in Warsaw. He returned to exile in May 1882 – this time to Smolensk. He received full release from exile in December 1883, and the following year he returned to his former diocese. When his priestly rights were restored, he became a vicar in Klwów, and then in Tczów near Kozienice, where he died on 14 February 1889 at the age of 65.
The birch box – and in it the exile’s shackles – remained in the family. Father Piwarski also brought his Siberian chasuble, which was “very poor […], in white, red and blue” (perhaps hand-made in Tunka), and a cover for a liturgical book, “with a crown of thorns on it”. In 1927, the priest’s family donated the box and the chasuble to the church in Sandomierz. The box survived; the shackles and cover may have remained in the family (?), but no one knows where the chasuble is today.
The inscriptions on the lid of the box reveal a little of the secret of the exile artist – the creator of this memento – its owner, and his companions in exile in Tunka and in Spassk. On a medallion in the middle of the lid, set in a different dark wood, are two letters intertwined: “KP”, the initials of Father Konstanty Piwarski. They are surrounded by a “wreath” consisting of a convict’s chain with two hammers (probably for breaking ore in mines), and on the sides the date: 12.4.1879. Around them are engraved the names of the places where the priest was exiled: “Piotrovsk. Domna. Sivkovo. Darasun. Irkutsk. Spassk”. At the bottom of the medallion is a second date,1863–1879, and the surname K. Sieciński. On both sides of the medallion, in two columns, are the signatures of 24 men written in pen and ink. Fourteen of these signatures belong to priests who had previously been with Piwarski in the settlement in Tunka, and the other ten are the names of secular exiles, all of whom lived in Spassk in 1879.
It can be deduced directly that the date of 12 April 1879 was connected with some important event in the life of Father Piwarski, perhaps his birthday (?). From his companions in exile in Spassk, on this day he received a gift which had been artistically made by Konstanty Sieciński (who came from the Kingdom of Poland). Often mentioned in the literature as Siciński, he was already known in Siberia as a talented craftsman-artist, among others as the builder of a beautiful house in Darasun. Moreover, in 1869 he presented his artistic products made of cherry wood at an agricultural and craft exhibition in Irkutsk. He received a “letter of praise” from the organizers at that time, and “Irkutsk Governorate News” wrote about it.
The names on the lid of the box can be read, although some are already fading away or have faded completely. It is to be feared that with time the rest will also disappear. Wanting to record especially those that are disappearing (on the left side of the lid), I took a photograph and then retouched the names – colleagues of Father Piwarski – most of whose signatures I know from Siberian documents. Here are the ‘corrected’ names: Far. Mikołaj Kulaszyński, Fr. W[alenty] Osiński, Fr. B[artłomiej] Grykietys, Fr. I[zydor] Ciągliński, Fr. Onufry Jassewicz, Fr. Onufry Syrwid and Anioł Sosnowki [cleric]. Something could be said about all these signatories, but maybe I will mention only three priests: Onufry Syrwid, Ignacy Klimowicz and Mikołaj Kulaszyński.
Syrvid came from Lithuania. He was a guard in the prison barracks in Usol on the Angara River and a confessor to priests in Tunka. He never left Spassk because the authorities did not agree to release him. He died in Spassk in 1887. The Dominican Klimowicz was from Warsaw. In 1866 in Alexandrovsky Zavod beyond the Baikal Lake, he participated in a “revolt” of prisoners who were refusing to work on Catholic holidays. In Tunka he earned extra money as a bookbinder; he also sculpted, modelled and fired clay figurines and pipes. He returned to Poland in 1883 and died in Chortkiv in Galicia in 1902. In Kraków, the Dominicans keep his very interesting Siberian diary (maybe it will be published soon).
Kulaszyński (from the Lublin diocese) was in exile in Tunka and occupied himself with philosophical and religious studies; he translated a book from German. He later wrote and printed his Siberian memoirs, which he sent from Russia to the Polish press, including “Wędrowiec” in Warsaw and “Warta” in Poznań. In 1889, freed, he left for Galicia, where he died in Rohatyn in 1901 at the age of 73. Apparently, some of the manuscripts of his memoirs ended up in the Polish Museum in Rapperswil in Switzerland, and still others in Chicago.
Eugeniusz Niebelski is a professor at Catholic University in Lublin
Translated by Sylwia Szarejko