Pierwsze lata Alfreda Jurzykowskiego w Nowym Jorku
First years of Alfred Jurzykowski in New York

Summary/Abstract: We know astonishingly little about life of Alfred Jurzykowski, one of the richest Polish businessmen, and also the founder of the largest of the Polish foundations, as well as the Alfred Jurzykowski Award program, commonly called “the Polish Nobel prize”. There are only two short bios both of them omit almost completely the New York period of life and activity of the Polish businessman. Zenon Rogoziński, author of one of those concise biographies mentions only that after the September 1939 war against Nazi Germany, Jurzykowski arrived in New York City, where he founded, together with Mr. Alfred Schenker, known to him from the pre-war Poland, a chocolate factory, “Delicia” Chocolate and Candy Manufacturing Co. Facts, established after my research at the New York archives deny that. There are names of different persons on a letter of incorporation of December 1940. They were somehow connected with Poland, as well as engaged with the confectionary business. However, there is no name of Jurzykowski nor Schenker. Name of the latter, one may find only on the next official document from 1954 when a fusion between “Delicia” with another business took place. Closer examination of documents available makes one to believe that Jurzykowski was in fact among the founders of that factory, but as a foreigner just recently arrived in the US he preferred that others – American citizens well known from their busi-nesslike activity, stepped forward. This supposition is additionally confirmed by Alfred Jurzykowski’s letter to the President of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences with which the Polish businessman showed himself for the first time as a philanthropist and supporter of Polish culture. He declared his willingness to a generous finance of a scholarly work – a publication about the contribution of the Polish forces in Allied army to the victory in the WWII. He signed this letter of December 1948 as the President of the Board and it seems improbable that in eight years he could have made such a career even in a relatively small business as “Delicia” was: from “nobody,” to the President of the company. The paper makes only a small contribution to Alfred Jurzykowski’s biography. It is important though, since it was Jurzykowski’s constant search for less expensive sources of production – cocoa and coffee – that has made him go farther and farther from New York City to Central America until he got to Brasil. And it was there where he found out that in that enormous country there was an opportunity for a much larger business – automobile industry which became source of his huge fortune.

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