Jan Hernik is dead, who has been struggling with glioma for two years. In 2024, the photo by his wife, of which he was a hero, was awarded in the Grand Press Photo competition.
On January 25, 2025, Jan Hernik died, who struggled with the glioma. “He flew away on his terms. As he planned, wrapped in love,” his wife Anna Hernik wrote in social media.
Hernik is a laureate of the Internet Award of last year's Grand Press Photo. In the most important journalistic competition, the photo was appreciated not only by the jury, but above all by Internet users. The photographer in one frame captured her life, but also other families who face glioma, extremely malicious brain tumor. In 2022, Anna's husband heard the diagnosis.
LOOK: The whole family faces dad's illness. The photo of Anna Hernik delighted the Internet users
The highlighted photo was taken after the surgery of Mrs. Anna's husband, who was diagnosed with the fourth degree glioma. – Beautiful light fell into the room, his son was very longing behind his dad, he sat with him, looked at him with such fear – Anna Hernik recalled in an interview with TVN24.
The photo taken by Hernik says more than millions of words. – That it is worth fighting and it is worth not to give up – explained Jan Hernik. He noted that this was his “most important photo”.
The whole family faces dad's illness. The photo of Anna Hernik delighted the Internet usersAnna Hernik/Private Archive
In June 2024, Iga Children's TVN24.pl journalist talked to Anna Hernik. The conversation can be read in tvn24.pl.
– We didn't know for a long time that it was a glioma. The doctor who examined Janek after the accident did not say that Janek has a tumor, that it could be a cancer. We started diagnostics a few days later. The husband was hospitalized, he had magnetic resonance imaging, he took his cerebrospinal fluid. For a long time in medical opinions we were convinced that the tumor can be seen, but it is a small tumor and benign. Doctors said that her husband would live to ninety – said Mrs. Anna.
– In Poland, brain cancer diagnostics are still very difficult. We are 2024, we fly into space, and we still don't know much about it. We walked on neurosurgeons, various diagnoses fell. There was even a suspicion that it was a cyst caused by the parasite. Finally, we came across two neurosurgeons who said it was a glioma. One of them looked at the picture and immediately said that it was a multi -stone glioma, the fourth stage – she mentioned.
Jan Hernik with his son Anna Hernik
Source of the main photo: Anna Hernik/Private Archive