Stanisław Orzełowski's Address at the Reunion

Jasionka, 21 July 2007.

I greet you, worthy Relatives, members of the Jasiński family.

I greet you, dear Guests,
who were kind enough to accept our invitation
and to join our family celebration.

My soul rejoices that I have lived to see so beautiful a moment as the Jasiński Family Reunion, the family my mother came from as well. Twice before I have had the chance to gather a large circle of the closer family, descended from my grandfather Feliks Jasiński, my mother's father. Those reunions were held in 1992 and 2000 in Jasionka, the ancestral village of the Jasińskis, and each time more than a hundred of us came. This year marks fifteen years since our first meeting.

My experience in this field reaches further, because in my father's family, the Orzełowski family, I organised three reunions. The last and largest was held on 26 July 2003 on the meadows of the village of Plewki, and about a thousand people came from all over Poland and from Australia, America and countries across Europe. It was a great family celebration, the like of which the Orzełowski family had never known.

While gathering material for the commemorative Jasiński Family Book, I shared with my cousins what I had lived through at the earlier reunions. I was often asked whether such a reunion would be possible in the Jasiński family. Perhaps I was getting ahead of myself, but I told everyone that if I found allies for the idea, I would certainly want to organise one. It would be a gathering not only for the branch described in the Book, but for all the Jasińskis living in Jasionka or descended from it. Today my plans have come true, and I thank God for it.

The Jasiński family, to which I belong through my mother Marianna-Janina, is very close to my heart. My bond with it began in childhood, when my grandmother Leokadia-Helena Jasińska, my mother's mother, would come from Jasionka to our family home in Plewki. But it was not my mother who led me into the history of the Jasiński family. She was caught up in a thousand duties, running the house and the farm and raising nine children, so she had no time, and perhaps no inner need, to speak at length about her family. I learned the most about the Jasińskis from my father, Franciszek, who had it from his father-in-law, Feliks Jasiński. My father was deeply in love with his wife and was very fond of her father too. That fondness had begun earlier, when my father sang in the parish choir in Zbuczyn, conducted at the time by my mother's father, Feliks Jasiński, later my father's father-in-law. That above all made my father look on him as a great authority. Later he saw many other fine qualities in him: great skill as a carpenter, and the wisdom about life that my father noticed whenever they were together. In this way my father took in everything about the family, and passed it on to his children at every opportunity.

Though I bear my father's name, my bond with the Jasiński family is no weaker than with the Orzełowskis. My mother's blood undeniably flows in my veins as well, but the ties of feeling reached me through the company of the family's own members. All this left a thought glowing somewhere deep in my mind: to make good use of everything written down and heard about the Jasiński family, and to save it from being forgotten. For a long time I did not dare admit that a Jasiński Family Book might come of it. Greatly encouraged by my father, I first set about describing the Orze(y)łowski family. When I had finished that after three years, I found that I had not forgotten my mother's family. At every opportunity I added to my archive the fragments of Jasiński history I had collected. After some three years of painstaking work, those fragments of a 250-year history were carefully arranged in the Jasiński Family Book, which by now has reached most of your homes.

Our family, like an old and mighty tree, has sunk its roots deep into the soil of Podlasie. It has withstood the storms of history, wars and plagues. Jasionka, the ancestral village of the Jasińskis, was probably founded by the last Piast rulers, so it is more than 600 years old. Over the centuries the dust of time covered the ties of kinship, and the Jasińskis living in Jasionka today do not know in which generation their roots meet. I am very glad that I was able to take in this branch of the family, descended from Jakub, and to describe it genealogically and historically.

We began preparing for the reunion a year and a half in advance. First of all we asked ourselves where in Jasionka such a gathering could be held. At first we were to meet on the homestead of Kazimiera Dziewulak, who is closely related to one branch of the Jasiński family through her father's mother. That farm now belongs to Edward and Ania Jasiński. When it turned out that more than a thousand people had accepted our invitation, it became clear that so large a gathering needed more room. On Aunt Kazia's homestead, by the wayside shrine, we set only the commemorative stone.

Bringing the reunion to completion cost us an enormous effort, physical, mental and financial alike. To all my Cousins and allies, who supported me in publishing the Book and in preparing the Reunion, I pay public tribute today and offer my warmest thanks. Thank you for doing such an enormous amount of work freely, for the good of us all.

I will admit to you that there were very hard moments, when I thought the difficulties piling up without end would swallow me. I began telling myself I had bitten off more than I could chew. With God's help and the encouragement of those closest to me, we came safely through to the day of the gathering. I believe that our work, and the effort we gave to this family idea, will bear fruit one day.

My heart rejoices to see you gathered in such numbers. The register shows that more than 1000 people have met here. Some of you had to cross thousands of kilometres to be here, to sail the oceans or to fly over them. And some, though they live close by, did not feel the need to be here with us.
Everything begins with awareness, and that is always the hardest thing for a person to come by. Many of us are seeing one another for the first time; others have met friends and neighbours here, never knowing before that they are bound by blood, that they are cousins.

The commemorative Jasiński Family Book, which has reached your homes or soon will, is not meant for you alone. Treat it with care, for generations will use it. I am deeply convinced that it will be a storehouse of knowledge about our genealogy and our family history. The information in it I found in archives; some of it was given to me by my Parents and by many of the elders of our family, scattered across the country, whom I managed to reach. Sadly, some of them did not live to see the Book published, or this Reunion. Among the elders whom God has called to himself from this earthly world are my own Parents, to whom I owe so much. This Book cannot be read straight through like a novel. Its contents have to be worked through slowly, so that you can find your way in this family and climb freely among the boughs and branches of the family tree.

There is no denying it: the Jasińskis of Jasionka are a mighty family tree. From its trunk grew Jakub's branch, whose 250 years I described in the Book. The other five branches of that tree share its roots, of this I am deeply convinced. To prove it, one would have to look into archive books written more than 250 years ago. Perhaps someone in the Jasiński family will one day take up that labour. They will need Latin, though, for that is the language the records were written in then.

I thank God for letting me begin by recovering the history of the Jasińskis in Jakub's branch. Today's reunion is eloquent proof that it was needed. Without that work we would not know that we form one great family. Some people used to say that different Jasiński families lived in Jasionka, unrelated to one another. To settle the question, we had to reach the archives and the elders. It gives me great satisfaction that through my own effort and patient work I have commemorated the lives of my ancestors and saved them from being forgotten, on my father's side and my mother's alike, and so paid them the tribute they are due.

I greet you all warmly, worthy relatives, and ask you never to forget that every tree withers if its roots do not reach water. Our family tree will wither too if we do not feed it with brotherly feeling. Parents and grandparents have a great part to play here: it is from them that children learn where their roots lie. Let us respect and tend this treasure that is family, for no one feels its absence more painfully than the one who has lost it.

Let me quote the song with which our Family Choir has just welcomed the guests to the reunion: "Perhaps our children, following our example, will walk in their fathers' footsteps a few years from now. So that our meeting is not the last, but a good beginning of this brotherly love." May God help our children in this work, for the idea we serve, the idea of bringing the family together, is a beautiful one and deserves every care.

I wish you, worthy Relatives, deep spiritual experiences at this reunion, so that when you return home you can say that the time you gave it was not wasted. I ask all the members of our family who live here and nearby to feel like hosts and to take under their roof those more distant cousins who have no close relatives here but have come to the reunion. Their parents or grandparents were born here but later moved away, and their descendants now live in every corner of Poland and the world. Today especially it is worth recalling our old Polish saying: "A guest in the house – God in the house." Keep well.

Author of the Book and organiser of the Reunion

- Stanisław Orzełowski