Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

Pogonowski published an illustrated history of Poland (2000), historical atlases and a work on Polish heraldry (2002).

Pogonowski compiled several Polish-English, English-Polish dictionaries which have appeared since 1981, including his Unabridged Polish-English Dictionary (3 volumes, New York, Hippocrene Books, 1997; some 100,000 entries) and the Polish-English, English-Polish Standard Dictionary (1985, reprinted 1993, 1994 and 1997).

Pogonowski was born in Lwów, Poland. After the invasion of Poland in World War II, in December 1939 Pogonowski, aged 18, left Warsaw with the intent of joining the Polish Armed Forces in the West. He was arrested in Dukla by the German authorities on suspicion of aiming to join the resistance. He was moved between prisons and camps for five years thereafter. Interned at the Krosno, Jasło, and Tarnów prisons among others, he was sent with 500 prisoners to Auschwitz, and from there, several months later, to Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen. He survived the camps and was liberated on 2 May 1945. Pogonowski summarized his experiences at the Nazi concentration camps in a three-page article popularized in Richard C. Lukas’ Out of the Inferno. In 1954 he graduated in Civil Engineering at the Catholic University: Institute Superieur de Commerce in Antwerp. He moved to the United States and in the following years worked as a project engineer in the oil industry.

Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski (3 September 1921 – 21 July 2016) was a Polish-born polymath and inventor with 50 patents to his credit. He was a civil and industrial engineer by profession, educated in Poland, Belgium, and the United States. He was also a writer on Polish and European history, author of historical atlases, and a lexicographer.