On September 20, 2012, in Miami, Florida, Tadeusz Mikołaj Grocholski, son of Adam Remigiusz and Barbara née Czetwertyńska, passed away. Tadeusz Mikołaj Grocholski was born on August 2, 1926, in Falenty, the estate near Warsaw of his great-grandmother Zofia Czapska Przezdziecka. He was the oldest of ten siblings.
During World War II, he began studies at an underground technical university and simultaneously participated in the “Wachlarz” operation, and in 1943-44 he completed the Home Army Cadet School, obtaining the rank of cadet corporal.
From August 1, 1944, he actively participated in the Warsaw Uprising, together with three siblings. He fought in Mokotów as a soldier of the First Regiment of Lancers of the Baszta Regiment Group in the area commanded by his father, Colonel of the Home Army “Waligóra”, who was twice awarded the Virtuti Militari order for participation in the 1920 war, the Silesian Uprising, and again for sabotage actions on the eastern borders of the Republic of Poland commanded by his organization Wachlarz AK.
After the Uprising, he was sent to the Sandbostel POW camp. In April 1945, he was liberated by the British army. After the war, in 1945-46, he worked in the Polish military mission at the Allied Forces Command in Bad Iserlohn (Polish legal office at the First British Army Corps). In 1950, he began studies in Liege (Belgium) in the Faculty of Architecture. In Brussels, he acted as a Member of the Audit Committee of Bratniak, also participating in special operations of the British Government; in 1957-59, he studied art history at the University of Vienna. From 1958 to 1959, he worked in Brussels for PanAm airlines as Assistant Technical Director, at the Expo 1958 pavilion exhibition.
In 1959, he permanently moved to the USA, first to San Francisco, where he worked in an architectural office, and from 1967 in New York, acting as a production manager for Italian television RAI, and in the Polish-American Chamber of Commerce. He married Bożena Hoppe, with whom he formed a wonderful couple ready to help many relatives, friends, and acquaintances arriving in New York. They have two daughters – Izabela and Krystyna. Shortly before Tadeusz’s passing, his granddaughter Samantha was born in Miami, Florida. He is remembered in the New York Polish community as an effective assistant to our compatriots in their immigration issues.
Tadeusz Mikołaj Grocholski was awarded, among others, the Partisan Cross, the Home Army Cross, the Cross of Valor, the Warsaw Uprising Cross, the AK Souvenir Badge – Operation Tempest, the Medal “for Warsaw 1939-1945”.
He was a wise and good man.
Family in the country and abroad