Tadeusz "Ralf" Adamowski (November 19, 1901 – August 22, 1994) was a

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...

- American

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an Ice rink, ice skating rink with Ice hockey rink, lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two o ...

player who competed in the

1928 Winter Olympics The 1928 Winter Olympics, officially known as the II Olympic Winter Games (french: IIes Jeux olympiques d'hiver; german: II. Olympische Winterspiele; it, II Giochi olimpici invernali; rm, II Gieus olimpics d'enviern) and commonly known as St. M ...

, and a supporter and popularizer of the sport in early twentieth century Poland.

Early life

He was the son of Polish musicians Józef and Antonina Adamowski née Szumowska, who with Józef’s brother Tymoteusz Adamowski made up the Adamowski Trio. He was the brother of Helenka Adamowska Pantaleoni, film and stage actress and humanitarian associated with the founding of

UNICEF UNICEF (), originally called the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund in full, now officially United Nations Children's Fund, is an agency of the United Nations responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid t ...

. He was also a cousin of the Polish pianist and diplomat

Ignacy Paderewski Ignacy Jan Paderewski (; – 29 June 1941) was a Polish pianist and composer who became a spokesman for Polish independence. In 1919, he was the new nation's Prime Minister and foreign minister during which he signed the Treaty of Versail ...

.Muzeum Histori Polski (Museum of Polish History
"Dwudziestolecie: Oblicza Nowoczesnosci 1918-1939. Sport w II Rzeczypospolitej
(The 20's: Faces of Modernity 1918-1939. Sport in the Second Republic), . Last accessed August 18, 2010. Adamowski was born in

Lausanne Lausanne ( , , , ) ; it, Losanna; rm, Losanna. is the capital and largest city of the Swiss French speaking canton of Vaud. It is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway between the Jura Mountains and the Alps, and fac ...

, Switzerland when his parents, Polish immigrants to the United States, had traveled there so that his mother could avoid being in the spotlight in her advanced pregnant condition. His family resided in

Brookline, Massachusetts Brookline is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, in the United States, and part of the Boston metropolitan area. Brookline borders six of Boston's neighborhoods: Brighton, Allston, Fenway–Kenmore, Mission Hill, Jamaica Plain, and ...

, and were actively engaged in the music world in Boston but also traveled frequently to Europe. Adamowski graduated from the Browne and Nichols School in the class of 1918. He finished a degree in

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analy ...

at Harvard (

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Greater Boston, Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most ...

) in 1922. While in school he played

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wit ...

tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball c ...

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

and ice hockey. He was a member of the Harvard hockey team,Bartosz Kaczyński, ''Daily Sport News''
Tadeusz Ralf Adamowski – pionier hokeja w Polsce
(Tadeusz Ralf Adamowski – Pioneer of hockey in Poland), . Last accessed August 18, 2010 and the college's

fencing Fencing is a group of three related combat sports. The three disciplines in modern fencing are the foil, the épée, and the sabre (also ''saber''); winning points are made through the weapon's contact with an opponent. A fourth discipline, ...

team."Fencing Team Defeats Tech"
''

The Harvard Crimson ''The Harvard Crimson'' is the student newspaper of Harvard University and was founded in 1873. Run entirely by Harvard College undergraduates, it served for many years as the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Beginning in the f ...

'', 1920

In Poland

In 1925 "he went to Warsaw as an agent for the General Motors Corporation". In Warsaw he ran into Polish hockey players, associated with the club AZS Warszawa, who asked him to join their team after he explained he had played hockey at Harvard. With Adamowski on the team, AZS Warszawa five times in a row won the Polish championship (1927, 1928, 1929, 1930 and 1931). Between 1926 and 1931 he was the center of the Polish national team and was considered to be one of the most technically skilled hockey players in Europe. He was chosen as the fourth most popular athlete in Poland in 1927 (and 7th in 1929). In 1926 Adamowski took part in the European Hockey Championship in Davos, as part of the first-ever international appearance of the Polish ice hockey team. Adamowski played in the European Championships six times in all (1926, 1927, 1929-silver medal, 1930, 1931-silver medal, and 1933). He participated in the

World Championships A world championship is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game, ...

three times (1930, 1931, and 1933). In 1928 Adamowski skated in the Olympic tournament, also with Poland's national hockey team. In 1930, during the World Championships in Davos was appointed to represent Europe at the game with Canada. One of his greatest hockey successes came in 1931 at the World Championship in Krynica, when the Polish team with Adamowski as its leader took fourth place, after Canada, USA, and Austria, making it the second team in Europe. He became the coach of the Polish national team in 1927 and served until 1930, as well as in 1932. As a coach he popularized Canadian hockey methods and strategy which stressed teamwork over individual players. Along with

Aleksander Tupalski Aleksander Tupalski (5 October 1900 – 9 January 1980) was a Polish ice hockey and football player. He played for the Poland national team at the 1928 Winter Olympics. Born in Germany, he grew up in St. Petersburg before moving to ...

he also served as a coach for the Gdańsk club Gedania. In the 1930s he worked initially for the group General Motors (delegation in Warsaw), and then in the enterprise "Gdynia-America shipping" S.A.

During World War II

In 1939, during the

Nazi invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after ...

he was called up from the reserves into the Polish army and fought as a

Second Lieutenant Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces, comparable to NATO OF-1 rank. Australia The rank of second lieutenant existed in the military forces of the Australian colonies and Australian Army until 1 ...

in the 21st Regiment of the 2nd Polish Corps, Vistula Uhlans (21 Pułk Ułanów Nadwiślańskich) near the towns of

Bydgoszcz Bydgoszcz ( , , ; german: Bromberg) is a city in northern Poland, straddling the meeting of the River Vistula with its left-bank tributary, the Brda. With a city population of 339,053 as of December 2021 and an urban agglomeration with more ...

and

Grudziądz Grudziądz ( la, Graudentum, Graudentium, german: Graudenz) is a city in northern Poland, with 92,552 inhabitants (2021). Located on the Vistula River, it lies within the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship and is the fourth-largest city in its pro ...

. Captured by the Germans, he was imprisoned in

Oflag II-C Oflag II-C Woldenburg was a German World War II prisoner-of-war camp located about from the town of Woldenberg, Brandenburg (now Dobiegniew, western Poland). The camp housed Polish officers and orderlies and had an area of with 25 brick hu ...

in Woldenberg (

Dobiegniew Dobiegniew (german: Woldenberg) is a town in western Poland, in Lubusz Voivodeship, in Strzelce-Drezdenko County. As of December 2021, the town has 3,004 inhabitants. History The area formed part of Greater Poland in Piast-ruled Poland. The se ...

).Woldenberg was then located in Germany but after 1945 became part of Poland as the city of Dobiegniew. While in the camp he participated in educational activities for prisoners, organized classes for studying English and played basketball on the camp team. At the end of the war he managed to reach American troops stationed in Europe. He moved to the United States, where for many years he worked for UNICEF. He died in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

in 1994.Polski Komitet Olimpijiski (Polish Olympic Committee)
profile ADAMOWSKI TADEUSZ "RALF" (1901-1994)
, , last accessed August 18, 2010

References

External links

Sports Reference Sports Reference, LLC, is an American company which operates several sports-related websites, including Sports-Reference.com, Baseball-Reference.com for baseball, Basketball-Reference.com for basketball, Hockey-Reference.com for ice hockey, Pro- ...

Olympic Sports (statistics)
* Polish Olympic Committe

(in Polish) {{DEFAULTSORT:Adamowski, Tadeusz 1901 births 1994 deaths AZS Warszawa (ice hockey) players Harvard College alumni Ice hockey players at the 1928 Winter Olympics Olympic ice hockey players of Poland Sportspeople from Lausanne Sportspeople from Brookline, Massachusetts Polish ice hockey centres Polish military personnel of World War II Polish prisoners of war UNICEF people World War II prisoners of war held by Germany Buckingham Browne & Nichols School alumni American officials of the United Nations Prisoners of Oflag II-C