About Prince Adam Czartoryski
Adam Michał Józef Czartoryski (1906–1998) was born at the Pełkinie palace near Jarosław, the ninth of eleven children of Prince Witold Leon Czartoryski and Countess Jadwiga Dzieduszycka. He grew up in a household marked by strict discipline, deep Catholic faith, physical endurance, and intellectual rigor — tutored by Maciej Rataj, who would later become Marshal of the Polish Sejm.
After completing his gymnasium in Lwów (1924) and forestry studies at the Lwów Polytechnic, Adam managed family estates and eventually inherited 2,740 hectares near Poznań. The war interrupted everything: he commanded an artillery battery in the September 1939 campaign, destroying over a dozen German tanks at Rożki and earning the Cross of Valor. Captured and escaped, he spent the occupation managing forests and organizing AK resistance under the codename "Szpak," launching Operation Tempest in Szczawnica in July 1944.
After the war, he endured 26 years of persecution at Poznań University under communism — periodic dismissals, blocked habilitation, surveillance — before retiring to the mountains near Zakopane in 1971. These recordings, made around 1986 when Adam was approximately 80 years old, capture an extraordinary oral history of Polish aristocratic life, wartime resistance, and survival through two totalitarian occupations.
Timeline
Key events from Adam's life as described across 15 tapes of interviews. Click any event to jump to the relevant transcript.
Tape Summaries
Each tape covers different aspects of Adam's life. Click a tape to read the full transcript.