3.3.1 They made a lasting impression.
—The teachers.
Born in 1909 in Westphalia, Jan Harwas had never taught before coming to Villard. He studied classical philology and sociology. He was passionate about philosophy (the war prevented him from completing his doctoral thesis on Plotinus). Multilingual and universal in his approach, he spoke Latin as well as his mother tongue. Between 1938 and 1940, he was head of the cultural service of the Polish consulate in Lille. At Villard, he taught Latin and Greek. He was taken prisoner during the Battle of Vercors and shot a month later.
Kazimierz Gerhardt trained as an engineer and worked in industry in his home town of Lwów. He was also an assistant at the polytechnic school. He taught physics and chemistry at the Polish high school in Paris, and then in Villard. Highly sociable and with a very distinctive sense of humour, he liked to dress and behave in the “English style” . He suffered the same fate as Jan Harwas: he was taken prisoner and shot in the summer of 1944.
Tadeusz Steffen was born in Poland. He was an engineer rather than a teacher by training, specialising in connections. At Villard, he taught physics and assisted Jadwiga “Mama” Gostyńska in managing the boarding school. The two formed an inseparable couple, but waited until they returned to Poland to get married.
Marian Kozłowski, an engineer and deputy director of the Drohobycz oil centre, was a chemistry and English teacher.
Zbigniew Puget, a well-known painter, taught drawing.
Wlodzimierz Tarło-Mazińsk was a former army officer (Russian, then Polish), electrical engineer and a doctor of philosophy. He taught astronomy, history and philosophy at Villard.
- Adam Skinder, student- Our school, 2017, based on Mój Villard de Lans, 1978
Włodzimierz Tarło-Maziński was a highly controversial figure. I met him for the first time in Lyon, on the Rue de la Tête d ‘Or, at the consulate of the Republic of Poland, where he issued a passport to me and my two friends. We had just escaped from the camp at La Courtine where we had been forcibly enlisted in the Foreign Legion. We wanted to go to Argentina, where my uncle had lived for several years. He surprised me by asking: “And how is your father Stach? We knew each other in Wilno.” I stammered a vague answer, because obviously I had no news of my family, but it was the stammering of a well-mannered young man.
He was a very kind man. He had moved from Lyon to Grenoble, where he had taken up residence in the Hôtel de la République in the company of the “forest fauna”. This was the nickname given to our former dignitaries, who came from Poland with their entire families and often their possessions. They passed their time in vain discussions on topics such as “What will the new zloty (the Polish unit of currency) look like?” and consuming various delicacies. They lived, with a few exceptions, in grand style.
Tarło-Maziński felt lost there. He loved contact with young people, and this is what led him to Villard, teaching astronomy, and mathematics as a secondary subject. His fascinating classes made us feel the immensity and omnipotence of the universe and our own smallness within this infinite space.
In the evenings, he organised outings with the students and sometimes with the teaching staff, which gave him the opportunity to illustrate, against the backdrop of a sky sparkling with millions of stars, the immensity of the universe, the smallness of the earth and the supreme power of the laws of life. “You see, everything in this world is subject to order and immutable laws, by which man himself must regulate his behaviour. If you want to consciously regulate your behaviour to achieve your goal, you need to keep this in mind. But to have this order in mind, you first need to have it around you! Hence the saying, ‘Show me where you live and I ‘ll tell you who you are.’”
