Berea — Jerzy Janusz “George” Maciuszko was a leading librarian and Polish scholar.
Maciuszko died March 3 at the Renaissance in Olmsted Township. He was 97.
He headed Baldwin-Wallace College’s Ritter Library and the Cleveland Public Library’s prestigious special collections department. He also chaired Slavic and modern languages at the former Alliance College in Cambridge Springs, Pa., where he started a pioneering academic exchange with Poland.
Among dozens of honors, Maciuszko won an Officers’ Cross of the Order of Merit from Polish President Lech Walesa, an Eagle Trophy from the American Nationalities Movement and a “Man of the Year” award from the American Biographical Institute, for which he wrote.
Congratulating him for a Polish Heritage Award from the Cleveland Society of Poles, President Clinton wrote, “As a scholar, writer, and educator, you have made your own outstanding contributions to the heritage and to the intellectual life of our nation. Your efforts and achievements have helped to reaffirm the ties of family and friendship between the people of Poland and the United States.”
Eugene Bak, head of the local Polish American Cultural Center, said, “Polonia has lost its most distinguished citizen. He was always so considerate, so gentle.” Maciuszko donated many books to the center, which named its library for him.
John Grabowski, vice president of the Western Reserve Historical Society, said, “He was an absolute gentleman of the old school.” Introduced to Grabowski’s wife, Maciuszko kissed her hand.
The librarian helped to start Western Reserve’s ethnic collection. Now Grabowski will seek a publisher for a manuscript Maciuszko finished a few days before his death: “Poles Apart: The Tragic Fate of Poles During World War II.”
In 1983, Maciuszko told The Plain Dealer that literature had kept Poland alive. “When Poland was wiped off the map of Europe in 1795, literature assumed the role of guardian of the Polish identity.”
He felt that heritage mattered more to succeeding generations of Polish-Americans. “Often the first-generation immigrants put aside their ethnic background in a rush to become Americans, the second generation grapples with identity and the third returns to the beginnings.”
Jerzy Maciuszko (pronounced YUR-zhi ma-CHEWS-coe) was born in Warsaw. He graduated from the University of Warsaw with a bachelor’s degree in English. He taught English at a high school in Warsaw.
In 1939, the Germans invaded, and Maciuszko was captured at the border. He spent nearly six years in a prisoners’ camp. Besides hard labor, he played violin in a camp orchestra and wrote a short story, “Concerto in F-minor,” which passed the censors and shared top honors in a contest staged by the International YMCA.
Late in the war, Maciuszko escaped and became a liaison officer for the U.S. Army, helping fellow Poles find other homes than their newly Communist homeland. He moved to England in 1946 and inspected Polish secondary schools for the British Ministry of Education.
In 1951, he taught at Alliance. Soon he moved to Cleveland and joined its library’s foreign language department.
In 1963, Maciuszko began to direct the library’s John G. White Collection, which features folklore, orientalia and the world’s most comprehensive set of chess publications. He rose to head all of the library’s special collections, including books going back to the 1400’s. He also earned a library doctorate at Western Reserve University and taught there.
Maciuszko returned to Alliance in 1969 and chaired Slavic and modern languages there. He worked out an exchange program between his school and Jagiellonian University in Krakow.
In 1974, he moved to Berea and started four years of leading Ritter Library. At age 65, he had a child, Christina, with his wife, the former Kathleen Mart Post, another librarian. Retiring in 1978, he became a professor emeritus and continued to write and speak prolifically.
Among his many works were “The Polish Short Story in English: A Guide and Critical Bibliography,” published in 1969 by Wayne State University Press. A Columbia University reviewer called the book “a monumental work indispensable to all American teachers and students of Polish literature.”
He also wrote a monograph on the Polish Institute of America and chapters for the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History and the Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century. He chaired the Slavic division of the Association of College and Research Libraries and co-founded the association’s journal, Choice.
Maciuszko swam steadily and served on the board of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute at Ritter Library.
Survivors: wife, the former Kathleen Mart Post, and daughter, Christina of Cleveland Heights.
Memorial service: 3 p.m. on May 15 at the Polish American Cultural Center.
Contributions: Jerzy J. Maciuszko Memorial Fund, Polish American Cultural Center, 6501 Lansing Ave., Cleveland, OH 44105.
Eternal rest grant onto him O Lord and may the perpetual light shine upon him.
May his soul, and he souls of all the faithful departed, rest in peace. Amen.
Wieczne odpoczynek racz mu dać Panie, a światłość wiekuista niechaj mu świeci.
Niech odpoczywa w pokoju, Amen.
