Category: News

Kosciuszko Heritage’s Annual Report for 2012 – 2013 has been published.

The report details the organisation’s activities from July 2012 to October 2013. It was written by Ernestyna Skurjat-Kozek and edited by Lukasz Swiatek.

Kosciuszko Heritage is delighted by the Irish Government’s announcement that it is launching a program to recognise individuals who helped the Irish people during the Great Famine: individuals such as Sir Paul Edmund Strzelecki.

Ireland’s Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Jimmy Deenihan, announced the launch of the project as part of the 2014 National Famine Commemoration programme.

After months of planning and negotiations, an entry about a long-time Kosciuszko Heritage collaborator and supporter has been added to the Obituaries section of the Australian Dictionary of Biography.

The entry is that of John Hospodaryk (1952 – 2012), a teacher, author, musician and singer-songwriter.

P.E. de Strzelecki’s Humanitarian Deeds in Ireland has received a prize in Poland.

The film has been awarded Prof. Andrew Kryński’s Special Prize at the VIII Polish International Communities Multimedia Festival.

Pawel Gospodarczyk, the Strzelecki Heritage Inc. president, who was in Poland at the time, kindly collected and brought the prize diploma and brass trophy back to Australia.…

Marysia Thiele, a Kosciuszko Heritage committee member, has received a prestigious honour in Poland.

The editor of Polish Community Radio PBA in Adelaide was awarded the Silver Medal of Poznan, entitled “Labor Omnia Vincit”.

Felix Molski, one of the committee members of Kosciuszko Heritage, has written a review of Christine Kinealy’s new book Charity and the Great Hunger in Ireland: The Kindness of Strangers (published by Bloomsbury).

Kinealy – a Professor of History at the Caspersen Graduate School at Drew University in New Jersey – is a world-leading expert in the study of the Great Hunger.

Marysia Thiele, a Kosciuszko Heritage committee member, has paid a visit to the grave of Sir Paul Edmund Strzelecki in Poland.

“Primary School No. 53 in Głuszyna, bearing the name of Paul Edmund Strzelecki, invited me to visit the crypt of the meritorious dead of Wielkopolska on the Hill of St.…

Copies of the film P. E. de Strzelecki’s Humanitarian Deeds in Ireland, produced by Kosciuszko Heritage and launched in August, were distributed for free at the annual Famine Rock Commemoration Day.

Held on November 17, at Burgoyne Reserve at The Strand in Williamstown (Melbourne, Victoria), the event commemorated the “more than 1700 brave Irish Famine Orphans who left everything behind to come to Melbourne to make a new life from 1848, working as domestics for the colonists in this new country [Australia]” (as described by Tinteán magazine).…

Leaflets about Sir Paul Edmund Strzelecki will be available at this year’s Polish Festival in Melbourne.

The English-language leaflets about the humanitarian and explorer will be handed-out during the event at Federation Square on November 17.

Lidia Legun spearheaded the project and obtained the funding to print the leaflets.

Representatives from Kosciuszko Heritage have taken part in this year’s NAIDOC (National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee) celebrations in Jindabyne.

Ernestyna Skurjat-Kozek, the president of Kosciuszko Heritage, and her husband, Andrzej Kozek, along with their granddaughters, attended the festivities.

The aim of the day was to: “Share in the living culture of the original people of the Snowy Mountains.”