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Witold Rajkowski's Photographs

We have pleasure to invite to the exhibition Middle East and North Africa Through the Lens of Witold Władysław Rajkowski: photographs from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s’ organised by dr Antoni Kosowski in the Kraków Public Library.

Place: Rajska 1, III floor, attic gallery

Time: March 27 - April 26

Rajkowski’s interest in the Middle East was shaped as a Polish student in pre-war Cairo, where he was a press correspondent for Polish newspapers. In 1939, he was employed at the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Jerusalem. In 1941 – operating under the codename ‘Omar’; his underground work took him to Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine and Syria. From 1942-1945, he worked in the Diplomatic Legation of the Republic of Poland in Baghdad, as a press officer, and conducted intelligence work there, too.

During the 1940s, he published three books (in Polish, transl.):

Iraq: Minarets, Oil, Dates (Jerusalem, 1943)
Under the Sign of the Crescent: A Brief Outline of the History, Institutions and Branches of Islam (Jerusalem, 1946)
The Heart of the East Beats Over the Nile: Impressions and Images from Life in Cairo (Jerusalem, 1947)

He wrote more than 70 articles in Polish and English, including:

With a Bicycle in Babylonia, Wide World Magazine, February 1954, pp 308-312.
A Visit to Southern Kurdistan, The Geographical Journal, 1946, volume 107, no. 3-4, pp 128-34.

Rajkowski is believed to have died in 1957 of heat exhaustion in the Libyan desert, while on a scientific exhibition to research the Toubou or Tubu people.