Kris Murawski

KRIS MURAWSKI, Jan. 11, 1930 - Sept. 25, 2025
Retired hematologist, father, and grandfather, Kris Murawski, 95, died from a sudden illness in Raleigh, NC, on September 25, 2025.

A native of Warsaw, Poland, Krzysztof Wojciech Murawski witnessed the Nazi occupation of Poland as a child and the subsequent Communist takeover in his youth. During World War II, his family fled to safety in the Polish countryside, first in 1939, in the wake of the Nazi invasion, and then in 1944 during the Polish Uprising against the Nazi occupiers.

Dr. Murawski graduated in 1953 from the Warsaw Medical School, followed by a postgraduate degree in biochemistry. He married Sylvia Anna Winawer, a civil law attorney, in 1958. He served as the Head of the Department of Biochemistry and Director of Research at the Institute of Hematology in Warsaw. His research interests included molecular and genetic variants and abnormalities of blood proteins.

In 1969, Dr. Murawski and his wife, Sylvia, left Poland along with their two young boys, John and Anthony. That January, sacrificing their citizenship and most of their possessions, the family, along with other political emigrees, boarded a departing train in Warsaw. As the train approached the Austrian border, Dr. Murawski expected Communist agents to arrest him and prevent his emigration. When the train crossed the border without incident, he realized he was finally free. The family stayed in Rome for four months awaiting permission to come to America before immigrating to the United States through New York’s John F. Kennedy airport. A decade later, at the age of 50, he became a United States citizen.

In the United States, Dr. Murawski worked at the national office of the American Red Cross from 1971 to 1995 in several management and executive responsibilities, including as Associate Director, Blood Services.

In retirement, he was President of PAHA, an association of Polish physicians in the Washington, DC, area, and also served as President of the Federation of Polish Medical Organizations in the 1990s and remained active in the group for the rest of his life.

As a retiree, Dr. Murawski traveled to Peru, China, Egypt, Israel, India, and Europe. In 2014, he moved to Raleigh, NC, to be near family. He was particularly fond of opera, attending Metropolitan Opera simulcasts, and developed a taste for live bluegrass. Remarkably, as he was going blind in his 90s, he taught himself how to use voice activation features and multi-finger prompts to continue using his iPad and iPhone. He listened to audiobooks in English, Polish, and occasionally Russian.

He will be dearly missed by his son John, daughter-in-law Marceline (Raleigh, NC), and granddaughters Suzanna (New York, NY) and Julia (Raleigh, NC), as well as his son Anthony and grandsons Ben and Liam (Seattle, WA). Donations in his memory may be made to the JC Raulston Arboretum (contact Alycia Thornton at 919-513-7068) or the Metropolitan Opera at https://www.metopera.org/support/make-a-gift/support-extraordinary-opera/.