In memory of Professor Jerzy Dymecki (27.04.1926 – 31.08.2020)

Professor Jerzy Marian Dymecki was born on 27 April 1926 in Warsaw. On 1 September 1939, after the outbreak of World War II, he began the life of a wanderer. He survived the occupation with his family in Sanok. There he worked in a railway car factory, attended clandestine classes completing elementary and lower secondary education (gymnasium), being simultaneously an active scout. After the end of the war, the family moved to Gdynia where his father (Jan Lech Dymecki 1902-1968) was employed at the Repair Shipyard and received an apartment. There, Jerzy Dymecki completed his education in high school and in September 1946 he became a student of the Medical Academy in Gdańsk, now called Medical University of Gdańsk. He was taking anatomy lessons in a relatively little-damaged Anatomicum building. The lecturer of anatomy was, like most lecturers of the Medical Academy of Gdańsk, a former employee of the Vilnius University, prof. Michał Reicher (1888-1972), author of the last volume of Human Anatomy entitled “Central Nervous System”. Professor Dymecki recalled many wonderful lecturers he met during his studies (1946-1952): including prof. Tadeusz Bilikiewicz, who used to bring his patients to lectures and prof. Irena Konopacka-Semadeni, who was a soldier of the Home Army and a participant of the Warsaw Uprising. Professor’s future wife, Nina (Janina Bem-Dymecka 1928-1993) was a co-worker (as a liaison officer) of prof. I. Konopacka-Semadeni. Before obtaining his diploma, he was offered a job at the Provincial Mental Health Clinic in Gdańsk. After graduating in 1952, hesitating about the choice of the specialty, he took a post at the Psychiatric Clinic of the Medical University of Gdańsk and a part-time job at the department of neurology of the municipal hospital in Gdynia. But in the autumn of 1955, the Ministry of Health offered him a job at the Psychoneurological Institute in Tworki, in the Department of Organization and Health Protection. He changed his professional plans after a four-month course on the basics of neurology conducted by prof. Ewa Osetowska (1919-1978), who was fascinated by neuropathology after her stay in Belgium with prof. Ludo van Bogaert, an outstanding neuropathologist. Professor Jerzy Dymecki remained faithful to his neuropathological passion throughout his life. He asked to be employed in the Nervous System Histology Laboratory and in the neurological department where he studied neurology, as the specialty in neuropathology did...


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