On January 22, 2021, Henryk Jerzy Chmielewski passed away at the age of 97. Before the war, he was associated with the Polish Socialist Party, and as he mentioned, he was involved in drawing „political caricatures”. During World War II, he fought in General Kleeberg’s army until October 6, 1939. After escaping from a prisoner transport in 1941, he returned to Warsaw. From 1942, as a twenty-year-old, he published drawings in the underground press, sketched from radio broadcasts. Under the German occupation, listening to and possessing a radio was punishable by death. Chmielewski was a practical man, in 1980, he detailed how to pin a roll of drawings inside the trouser leg with a safety pin to avoid detection during street inspections when needing to cross the city to a contact point.
In May 1944, he was commissioned to create an album of drawings from life in occupied Warsaw. Well, the Uprising came, which even the direct courier from Washington, Jan Nowak Jeziorański, could not stop. The album’s theme became outdated, unreal within two months. Chmielewski fought in Mokotów until September 27, then through Pruszków he ended up in Stutthof. For an escape attempt, he was beaten so badly that, as he said: „I was all black, vomiting blood”.
Polish prisoners, doctors treating him provided him with some paper, and he began to draw camp scenes. After liberation he ended up in a British hospital, where nurses provided him paper, and he continued drawing.
Then, in the era of scheduled five-year plans of uninterrupted progress, it was all downhill.
From 1957 he drew in Świat Młodych (Youth’s World) the adventures of the chimpanzee Tytus de Zoo from Trapezfik (Central Africa). Tytus, found in a (Polish) space rocket, needed to be humanized (like the whole country after the war). This task was undertaken over many subsequent Books, comic booklets featuring the scouts Romek and A’Tomek.
If not for his age (and chronic lack of a social security number), A’Tomek would be a director of the still planned first Polish nuclear power plant today. And with the help of his comic guardian Professor T. Alent he would have fulfilled this task.
Tytus de Zoo is a monkey from the deep People’s Republic of Poland era, which has not lost its expressiveness in today’s whirlwind of images.
He’s a monkey extremely basic, just like us in the morning when we want to retreat anywhere, even to Trapezfik. A cheerful monkey, wanting to do something, wanting to humanize. Today, in the late post-post-postmodernism, this sounds like a paradox. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be (such are the laws of comics).
The Obelisk from Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey 2001 (1968), which humanized (?) and changed everything around it, was incredibly lucky that Tytus’ rocket didn’t land near it. It’s hard to imagine (without the opinion of Prof. T. Alent) what Tytus would do with such a black box. Scouts don’t give up, the world can’t be a dark mystery. The world exists to help the weaker, always.
We’re still a bit short of such a comic. It wouldn’t be bad if those now eagerly writing scenarios (from whichever perspective) read Tytus’s adventures more often.
And remembered that it’s not necessary to inhale the fumes of national martyrdom daily to retain the ability for efficient, unselfish action.
If you manage to get up, clear the snow, and find a moment to think up a better, not a bad story, just right for the next Book of Tytus de Zoo’s adventures. One, where the most mismatched places, things, values can be connected.
Only to help the weaker, regardless of how it affects the market rate of a local currency (last rate to check in: Book XVIII, 1987). Be prepared!
Illustration: to the right – a plaque on Nawrot Street 8, a trace of Papcio Chmiel’s Łódź episode.
