Open lesson of A. Mickiewicz Junior High School at the Rasos Cemetery

Students and teachers of Mickiewiczówka led an open lesson at the Rasos Cemetery devoted to Tomasz Życki and Antoni Odrowąż Kamiński.

“It is very nice of you that you wanted to join our lesson” – Elwira Bielawska, Polish language teacher in the Adam Mickiewicz Junior high school welcomed the gathering before the lesson started.

“Tomasz Życki was the man honoured not only for the Vilnius University but he was also an outstanding mathematician. He wrote several important studies in maths and was a person well-known in Vilnius district (…) whereas, Odrowąż-Kamiński is the person, who can be found almost in all encyclopaedias. It was a man who had ties with Philomaths and with the best period in the times of the Vilnius University. He had troubles due to the participation in the Philomath Society. The two persons are different, however, the Vilnius University binds them” – Czesłąw Dawidowicz, the director of the institution exlained to zw.It.

This is not the first such initiative of the junior high school. “In my opinion, we had very interesting lessons at the Bernardine Cemetery. There are graves, that we take care of” – said the headmaster of the school.

Alicja Klimaszewska suggested the heroes of today’s lecture at Rassos to students. “Lessons at Rassos take place, though not very often. One more lesson about the participants of the uprising in 1830-31 is going to take place. This will be an advanced lesson with the historic background” – informed Dawidowicz.

Antoni Odrowąż Kamiński was the Polish teacher and writer. After 1825, he was the listener of the courses at the Vilnius University at the Department of Physics and Mathematics. He gained the status of a student and a philosphy candidate. In 1825, the University chosen him as a lecturer in the mineralogy department at the University in Charków but he wasn’t employed as he belonged to the Philomaths. In 1827, he was sent to Kamianets-Podilskyi, where he worked as a physics and science teacher. Four years later, in 1832, he was dismissed. Since 1856, he stayed permanently at Vilnius, giving private lessons.

Tomasz Życki was born in 1763 in Kupryszki. In 1797 he began giving lectures at the Academy of Vilnius, which in 1803 was transformed into Vilnius University. In 1820, he became the Dean of the University. During the philomaths trial, he held the post of the Universty’s rector for a short time. He died in 1839.