EFC

Roman Czernecki - an independent teacher

Roman Czernecki - an independent teacher

Professor Roman Czernecki (1904-1986) is the EFC Foundation patron and a renowned Polish educator. His work and values were an inspiration for establishing the EFC Foundation. During the occupation, he built an underground teaching system in the current Świętokrzyskie province. He dedicated his entire life to education.

After the war, he founded the school in Szczekociny, worked as head of the educational department of the Zielonogórskie province, became rector of the Public College of Education in Gdańsk and lectured at the Warsaw University of Technology. He was a great organizer, whose goal was to support the educational development of young people, no matter how much they owned or where they came from. He knew that wasting their potential would be an incredible loss for Poland.

Roman Czernecki was born near the Eastern Borders in an educated family that deeply valued the importance of schooling.

He completed his studies in philosophy and Polish philology at the Jan Kazimierz University in Lviv. After university, he began working as a teacher in a high school in Krzemieniec, where his passion for educating first sparked. He was invested in the methodology of teaching. He also found joy in working with young people from different backgrounds, as well as in social projects which he often engaged his students in. He remains remembered as a teacher and professor who was loved and appreciated by his students.

After working in schools in Krzemieniec, Boryslav and Kielce, he found himself amidst WWII.  During German occupation, he successfully set up an underground teaching system in Słupia Jędrzejowska and its neighboring towns. Towards the end of the war the school hosted 934 students in 36 locations! This included over a hundred students of a secret branch of the Jagiellonian University.

Roman Czernecki, an AK Army member himself (pseud. “Wrzos”), remained in close contact with the leaders of local branches of AK, BCh and AL, while they provided members of his secret schools with security. The intel provided by these organizations, which sent warnings just in time, helped avoid many exposures and setbacks.

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His students continued to pay their respects at the Powązki cemetery in Warsaw long after his death. Professor Roman Czernecki was loved and respected by his pupils and remember as a great speaker and a kind human being.

The motto below was something he strongly believed in. It is also the foundation of our values at the EFC. 

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