Kreshchatik Avenue in Kyiv, on the left is Indrzishka music magazine, the publisher of sheet music of K.K. Regamey; from the collection of Jerzy Stankiewicz.

A forgotten figure

Kreshchatik Avenue in Kyiv, on the left is Indrzishka music magazine, the publisher of sheet music of K.K. Regamey; from the collection of Jerzy Stankiewicz.

The only person to have mentioned Régamey Sr in Switzerland was Nicole Loutan, author of his son’s only monograph, who reports that in 1937 the father asked his son not to send him any more letters from Warsaw. This request from a person of a foreign surname residing in Ukraine, understandable in the context of the dramatic political situation in the Soviet Union, brought an end to their correspondence, which was a fundamental source of information about the life and work of Régamey the father. Loutan adds that Konstanty’s cousin, who came from Kyiv to Warsaw during World War II, informed him that his father had been sentenced to ten years in a Soviet forced-labour camp. This version was later corroborated by Konstanty’s half-sister Svetlana Konstantinovna Regame, daughter of Konstanty Kazimierz from his second marriage, with whom Regamey Jr unexpectedly came in contact in 1962. Svetlana, then living in Moscow, confirmed that their father had been sent to a labour camp where he died of heart disease. The data I have most recently obtained from Kyiv archives force us to correct this information, as will be explained later.