Former January insurgents, who after the defeat of 1863 dispersed around the world in search of bread and a new home, very often found themselves as scientists, doctors, engineers or entrepreneurs, achieving professional success and gaining general respect. Popular countries of emigration included Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, where specialists in various fields were in demand on the wave of modernisation and nation-state building in the second half of the 19th century. One of the most interesting figures from the post-January emigration in the Balkans was Sigmund Mineyko, who became associated with Greece and whose tomb is preserved in the First Cemetery in Athens.

Lithuanian nobleman and Russian junker
Sigismund Mineyko came from an old Lithuanian noble family sealing with the Gozdawa coat of arms and settled in the Vilnius region. He was born in 1840 at Balvanishki estate, located in what is now Belarus between Oshmyany, Holshany and the town of Boruny, known for its Marian shrine. After completing his education at Vilnius Gymnasium, due to regulations in force at the time requiring Polish noble families from the so-called western gubernias to send their sons into state service, Mineyko became a junker (cadet) of the Nikolaev Engineering School in St Petersburg in 1858. This school trained engineering army officers and had a reputation as one of the better technical colleges in Russia.

Conspirator and partisan
Upon hearing of the patriotic demonstrations in the Kingdom of Poland in the spring of 1861, Mineyko left the school even before being appointed an officer. He was briefly involved in patriotic youth activities in the Vilnius region, but threatened with arrest by the Russian police, he was forced to go into exile. Travelling across the Borderlands from Vilnius to Kamieniec Podolski, then through Eastern Galicia, Bukovina, Romania and Turkey, Mineyko found himself at the Polish Military School in Genoa in the summer of 1861. He was part of that group of young people who disobeyed Mieroslawski and quickly left Genoa. He stayed temporarily in Turkey, where he found employment in railway construction.

In the winter of 1863, Sigmund Mineyko made an unsuccessful campaign in the Kielce region under Marian Langiewicz. After a short stay in Galicia, in the spring of 1863 he found himself in his home district of oszmiański, where he tried to wage guerrilla warfare with a small detachment. Faced with the considerable superiority of the Russians, he managed to survive in the field for only a few weeks and was taken prisoner after his party was broken up in June 1863. He only managed to avoid the death penalty thanks to a lavish bribe paid by his family. He was sentenced to imprisonment in Siberia, from which he quickly managed to escape.

Emigrant
After his escape from Russia in 1866, Mineyka's life as an emigrant began. For a few years he imitated various jobs in France and Bulgaria, and finally, in the early 1870s, he finally settled in Greece, which became his second homeland. There he worked for many years as an engineer specialising in the construction of roads, bridges, railways and the regulation of rivers. In love with Greece and its past, he was one of the initiators of the start of the search for the remains of the famous temple of Zeus at Dodona. Around 1880, he married Proserpina Manarys, daughter of the headmaster of the gymnasium in the town of Janina in northern Greece. With her he had three sons and five daughters brought up in the spirit of patriotism and respect for the culture of Greece and Poland. One of his daughters, Sophia, married Georgios Papandreou, a prominent Greek politician and founder of a 'dynasty' that plays a significant role in Greek political life to this day.

In addition to his work for his new homeland, Zygmunt Mineyko took an active part in the political and cultural life of the Polish emigration until his death. Interestingly, he was probably the first Polish Olympic correspondent, as he sent reports to the press from the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896. After Poland regained independence, he visited his homeland twice, in 1922 and 1923. At the hands of Józef Piłsudski, he was awarded the Virtuti Militari Order, 5th Class, for his participation in the January Rising, and nominated for the rank of veteran colonel. Until his death in 1925, he could be seen in Athens in his navy blue veteran uniform paying visits to the Polish Embassy on national holidays.

Although he fell in love with Greece and established a happy family there, Mineyko remembered his homeland with great fondness to the end of his life. "I visited many places of the world," he wrote at the end of his life in his memoirs, "and its numerous cities of splendid beauty, but Vilnius remained forever the most beautiful of all, and Lithuania the most enchanting country in my imagination.

In 1971, his memoirs of the years 1848-1866 Z tajgi pod Akropol [From the taiga to the Acropolis], which are among the most interesting Polish memoirs of the 19th century, were published.