Roman Umiastowski, who was born on January 29, 1893, in Warsaw and died on December 29, 1982, in London, has been a colonel in the Polish Army, a patriot and a bibliophile.
When the Germans invaded Poland, Umiastowski was the head of the propaganda department in the Polish High Staff.
On the night of 6/7 September 1939 he aired a message on the radio, urging all able men of Warsaw to go to the front; the idea was to man a defense line east of the Vistula.
The first in memory of his son, lieutenant Jan Kazimierz, who fell on May 11, 1944, as a member of The 5th Wilno Brigade at Monte Casino, Italy.
He had a remarkable collection, among which an important copy of Copernicus's De revolutionibus, which he eventually donated to a Polish library.