Władysław Plater

His older cousin, Emilia Plater, played a significant role in the struggle during which she died.

While in exile in Paris among Poland's Great Emigration, he founded the journal Le Polonais (1833–36).

To mark the centenary of the Bar Confederation, in 1868, Plater had a column erected surmounted by a Polish eagle with the Latin inscription, "Magna res libertas" (the great cause of liberty) in the Swiss town of Rapperswil, on the shore of Lake Zurich.

It was to become a major repository for Polish historic memorabilia, a library and archive based on donations and legacies from members of the Great Emigration.

Barely a century later, the collection, previously returned to Warsaw in independent Poland, was set alight in 1944 by the German occupiers as part of their systematic decimation of Polish and Jewish heritage on Polish soil, in a resurgence of their earlier Kulturkampf.