Jan Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski

Who was Jan Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski?

Ivan-Stepan Tokarzhevsky or Jan Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski was a Ukrainian diplomat and heraldry historian.

Born into a noble family in the village Chabanivka near Kamianets-Podilskyi, he was educated at a gymnasium in Zhitomir, and graduated from the University of Fribourg before World War I.

From 1918 to 1924, he served as a Ukrainian diplomat in Vienna, Constantinople, Rome, and Tarnov. From 1924 to 1936, he lived in France, where he was a member of the France-East Committee, and an editor of the La France et l'Ukraine bulletin. Then he lived in Italy, and in England, where he was a Ukrainian representative of Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. He was buried in a cemetery in Gunnersbury, a place in the London Borough of Hounslow, in 1954, and finally his relics were transferred to a pantheon of Ukrainian historical figures at South Bound Brook, New Jersey in 1978.

He was the cousin of general Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski. Tokarzhevsky was married to Oksana Lototsky, a daughter of another diplomat Oleksander Lototsky.