Born on January 5, 1920 in Włodzimierz Wołyński, Volhynian Voivodeship. Father Stanisław. Mother Janina née Dziewiszek. Brothers Zbigniew and Bohdan. Wife Anna née Surowiecka. Daughter Beata. Son Bohdan.

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After graduating from Jan Zamojski High School in Zamość in 1938, after an internship in the Junackie Hufce Pracy, on the construction of the Łuck-Lwów road, he wanted to join the air force. Medical tests in the military hospital in Lublin came out well. Uncle Romuald, major of the 7th Lublin Uhlan Regiment named after Lieutenant General Kazimierz Sosnkowski, (…) however, saw in his nephew a cavalryman, farmer and horse breeder. Not Dęblin with the School of Aviation Cadets, but Grudziądz with the School of Cavalry Cadets. (…)

"I was a cadet after a year of study in Grudziądz. I went to war
on the excellent mare Rota. In the fight I changed her to a beautiful, chestnut Chatka, a few years old, from the mobilization. The lancer riding her could not cope with her, because she was timid. She carried me out of all dangers. In the ranks, half-bred Anglo-Arabian horses were invaluable. I had contact with this breed many years later as a breeder.”

Cadet Jerzy Sas-Jaworski, with the qualification of a senior uhlan, was a section commander in the 3rd squadron of Captain Bazyli Marcisz and a liaison with the regiment commander Władysław Płonka. Battles, charge in the vicinity of Mszczonów, retreat to the south of Poland in combat.

"We fought our last victorious battle with the Germans for the village of Dzwola, twelve kilometres from Janów Podlaski. On the first of October, only the Russians were ahead of us. We were armed, unbroken, ready to break through to Hungary. Colonel Płonka, a knight of the War Order of Virtuti Militari, believed the officers of the Red Army and surrendered to them. In 1940, he was murdered together with other officers in Kharkov. The Uhlans, unruly, broke sabres in a forest clearing. We threw the locks out of our rifles and threw them into the water. We set off in cavalry formation towards Biłgoraj. In the village of Aleksandrów, we were released from our military oath by the officers. (...) I was slightly wounded near Dzwola. A machine gun dragged over me. From a tank. I recovered in the settlement. The fog of brown German and red Soviet occupation spread over Poland. I was to live and fight in it.”

(…) In April 1940 he was in Podhale with the intention of getting to France. He was caught and escaped. He worked on the Karolówka estate near Zamość. The Germans began to displace Poles from the Zamość region and settle their own people. Through an underground organization he was transferred to Chełm. He worked on the estate of Felicjan Lechnicki, a pre-war senator, occupied by the Germans. His brother Zbigniew was with him, who repaired weapons for the forest units of the Home Army. (…)

Jerzy Sas-Jaworski with a Home Army unit, after the Warsaw Uprising, made it to his uncle's estate near Mińsk Mazowiecki, to Nowodwór. He was with him at Krystyna Bełkowska-Sas-Jaworska's, where the standard of the 7th Lublin Uhlan Regiment was kept. There, in Mińsk Mazowiecki, the sergeant of the Lublin Uhlan, the squadron chief, said that things were starting to go wrong, that the Russians were capturing the Home Army members and taking them to Siberia. From the District Recruiting Command, he brought an order to go to Lublin. There, they asked him where he had served in the army, where he had fought in September 1939. He was promoted to second lieutenant and sent to Wesoła near Warsaw. Then there was a course for officers of the Polish Army. In January 1945, he set off for Bydgoszcz with the 7th Infantry Regiment of the First Polish Army. Breaking the Pomeranian Wall. From 8 to 18 March fighting in Kołobrzeg. He was, after a wounded Soviet officer, the commander of a mounted reconnaissance platoon. In the April Berlin operation on the old embankments of the lower Oder near Siekierki, with his platoon and the support of fusiliers, he destroyed German machine gun positions with grenades. After crossing the Oder, fighting north of Berlin. There he came across horses, trotters, taken from Berlin, and belonging to the Irish Embassy, ​​which was not in the Allied coalition. Air raid by German aircraft, fragmentation bombs. Wound. Hospital. Escape from the hospital. He experiences Victory Day on 9 May forty kilometres from Berlin. In accordance with military pragmatism, he had to report to the command of the officer reserve.

"I was afraid I would end up in some infantry regiment. As a cavalryman, a mounted reconnaissance soldier, I didn't want to. I found out where the Independent Cavalry Brigade was quartered, fighting on the same section of the front. It was in Gorzów Wielkopolski. On my way I met colleagues from the Cavalry Officer Cadet School in Grudziądz. I was willingly accepted into the Brigade as a front officer. I was sent to the 4th Uhlan Regiment, which was being formed. It didn't last long. A car came for me with an order to report to the 1st Uhlan Regiment, which was moving to the Gryfice area and further east of Sławno. There was no officer position for me at the rank of second lieutenant. I was temporarily installed in the regiment's headquarters. Then I was appointed commander of the regiment's artillery battery. All old front-line soldiers. They had to be in some kind of discipline, which they didn't like to maintain. After Captain Jan Wieżański, I then took command of the third squadron. We were stationed in Sławno and the surrounding area. In villages where it was easier to survive. There was a shortage of bread, potatoes, everything. Normal peacekeeping service began. Training of uhlans, horse riding, selecting horses. In the spring of 1946, we were relocated from Pomerania to the Warsaw province. My 1st Uhlan Regiment was stationed in Garwolin, in the former barracks of the 1st Mounted Rifle Regiment. Since there was nothing to feed the horses, my squadron was sent to mow grass in the Pasłęk area in Warmia. I passed the hay to the regiment. I returned to Garwolin in the autumn. I learned that I had to hand over the squadron because I was going to Warsaw to be an adjutant to General Stefan Mossor, deputy chief of the General Staff.”

He did not become an adjutant. General Mossor was arrested in 1950. He was the victim of a provocation intended to compromise the officer cadre of the Second Polish Republic. He was convicted in the general's trial. The Military Information, which already knew the biography of Second Lieutenant Jerzy Sas-Jaworski, opposed the nomination. Unreliable people were not wanted in high positions in the army. In the autumn of 1946, the horses of the Uhlans began to be transferred to agriculture. In 1947, the 1st Warsaw Cavalry Division was disbanded.

"I was in it until the end. I was liquidating a squadron in the Polish Army Quartermaster's Office. After receiving my discharge certificate, I went to the personnel department to ask what was going to happen to me. I told the colonel that I wanted to serve in the Polish Army, which I joined in 1938 at the Cavalry Cadet School in Grudziądz. He rummaged through my papers and declared that 'We don't need people like you in the army. You'll go to civilian life!' It was March 1947. I wasn't cut out for the army. It was a blow. But I had to live. He learned from his colleagues, non-commissioned officers in Garwolin, that the Internal Security Corps - KBW were looking for people to work in the foaling plant. He reported to the command of the Internal Security Corps on Rakowiecka Street in Warsaw and left with an order to go to the area of ​​Płoty, in Western Pomerania, where foals, children of military mares, were raised. That was how my work in horse breeding began (...). The first foaling farm was in the Komorowo estate near Resko. Łobez was nearby, and Major Marian Fabrycy was the manager of the Stallion Stud. I obtained a Pomeranian stallion with Gryf's smoking from him. The foaling farm was organized in the spring of 1949. I already had the first horses to renovate. But! The motorization of the army began and horses were no longer needed. Me too. Then I remembered Colonel Stanisław Arkuszewski, director of the State Horse Breeding Plants, with whom I had already tried to establish contact. His deputy was Major Henryk Harland. They wanted me to become a trainee, but for such money that it would not be enough for bread. I went to him asking for another job.”

The foal breeder was sent to organize a foaling facility in the Kujawy agricultural complex between Opole and Prudnik, near Moszna. The district inspector was Major Tadeusz Korbel, a veterinarian, and before the war the manager of the Stallion Stud in Gniezno. He visited the Stud Farm in Moszna. He met with the director Zygmunt Skolimowski, a pre-war breeder, a landowner from Surchów near Krasnystaw. After long, family conversations, in which the first bad impression caused by the officer's uniform of the Polish People's Army, which he still wore for lack of other clothing, was erased, he heard an offer to stay in Moszna.

"This is how my career as a thoroughbred horse breeder began. It would not have happened if not for Mrs. Janina, Zygmunt Skolimowski's wife, who turned out to be my mother's school friend. She convinced my husband that I was trustworthy and suitable as his deputy."

It was June 1949. Learning breeding from Zygmunt Skolimowski, reading books. Everything that came to hand. Moszna was until February 1, 1951. After a row with the gardener, he was transferred for a year to the Stud Farm in Kozienice to replace the breeder Władysław Byszewski.

"I came to Kozienice on February 1951, 1991, and I was at the Stud Farm until 1954. In my forty years of work, one of the most important events was January 1924, XNUMX, when I married Anna Surowiecka. (...) My route to Kozienice was prepared by outstanding people, engineer Stanisław Schuch and professor Witold Pruski. They knew me from Moszna. (...) Chief Schuch called me to his place and told me that I was to support the manager of the Stud Farm, and practically its founder since XNUMX, Ryszard Zoppi, an outstanding expert on thoroughbred horses, who had started to be wronged. I grew up in the army, I was used to recognizing authorities, military ranks. The greatest moral authority in my life is Józef Piłsudski. Constant conversations with Ryszard Zoppi, personal studies had an impact on what I know about horses."

Jerzy Sas-Jaworski had been the manager of the Stud since 1951, and its director since 1952. He was attacked three times. They wanted to take him away from the Stud. He somehow defended himself. (…)

In 1954 Ryszard Zoppi dies. His successor takes over the entire burden of managing the Kozienice State Stud, its land, people, buildings. In 1954 he is obliged to manage the valuable stallion Aguino. In 1955 he is one of the creators of the Kozienice Racing Stable at the Służewiecki Track. He changed the horse breeding technique. A very good rider, he supported the sport and practiced it himself at a masterly level. (…)

"Sports and racing horses that I remember? Skunks, Czubaryk, Czubczyk, Czerkies, Solali, Surmacz, Ariol, Sokolica, Blekot, Solnica, Via Vitae, Viaczyk (by Czubczyk), Bronz, Tyras, Bremen, Skarbiec. I won the Polish Dressage Championship on Akara. A middle-class horse. Too weak for jumping. I learned about dressage at school in Grudziądz. A large, beautiful horse of the Thoroughbred type. Obedient. Bred by the Stud Farm in Golejewko. Raised in Kozienice. The weanling came to Kozienice and was raised as a yearling. He did not stand out in races. He returned to Kozienice. He, Wandal, Besson, Argun, not qualified for breeding, became good sports horses. Impressive stallions were Aguino, Dar es Salam, father of Blekot, Good Bye, Brok.”(...)

Anna Surowiecka-Sas-Jaworska's pride is her son Bohdan, Polish Show Jumping Champion on Pericles, silver and bronze medalist on Bremen, and Olympian at the 1980 Moscow Games. Coach Marian Kowalczyk took his horse, Bremen, in Moscow and put Marian Kozicki on it, who won the team silver medal. Bohdan Sas-Jaworski accepted the coach's decision. He sacrificed his ambitions for the cause. However, he was wronged by not being given the opportunity to start in the individual competition on Bremen, who jumped under Marian Kozicki. This will be remembered at the Kozienice Stud Farm for as long as horses are bred there.

Jerzy Sas-Jaworski, a descendant of warriors fighting for Poland, himself a soldier, uhlan, partisan, scout, if it were not for the bad war fate of Poland in 1939, would have been a cavalryman and, after his uncle, the owner of the Nowy Dwór estate near Mińsk Mazowiecki, but he would not have been a breeder with a name written in golden letters in Polish breeding of the XNUMXth century.

Author: Witold Duński
Source: Horseback for Fame (2012) - Witold Duński