Mieczysław Gębarowicz

Mieczysław Jan Gębarowicz (17 December 189318 February 1984) was a Polish art historian, soldier, dissident, museum director and custodian of cultural heritage. He studied history and the history of art at Lwów University During the 1940s and 1950s he was responsible for saving many Polish cultural works in Lviv, including books and manuscripts, from being destroyed or dispersed.

Gębarowicz's studies were interrupted by World War I, when he served in the Austro-Hungarian Army. In 1918, he fought for the Poles in the Defence of Lwów.After graduating from university, he lectured at the Jan Kazimierz University (now the University of Lviv), where he was awarded a doctoral degree in 1921. The following yerar he took up a post in the Ossolineum in Lwów, where he became a curator. Between 1923 and 1938 he lectured in art history at Lwów Polytechnic. After the outbreak of World War II, he became one of the directors of the Ossolineum.

During and after the war, Gębarowicz secretly organised the dispatch of items from the collections of the Ossolineum to safety in Kraków and Wrocław. In February 1952 he was dismissed as a director by the Soviet authorities, but was allowed to work in Lviv as a research librarian. He was forced to retire in 1962, and died in Lviv in 1984. A published author, his research on the art of Ukraine and Lviv was published posthumously. Provided by Wikipedia