Early Life
Felix Dzerzhinsky was born into a purported Polish szlachta (noble) family of the Sulima coat of arms on 11 September 1877 at the family estate Dzerzhinovo farmstead, 15 km (9.3 mi) away from Ivyanets. As a child Felix dreamed to become a Jesuit priest (and based his later methods on Jesuitism). There is a story that in his youth he accidentally shot his sister Wanda, while by another version it was his brother Stanislaw.
His father, Edmund-Rufin Iosifovich Dzerzhinsky, graduated from the Saint Petersburg University in 1863 and moved to Vilno where he worked as a home teacher for a professor of Saint Petersburg University Januszewski and eventually marrying Januszewski's daughter Helena Ignatievna. In 1868 after a short stint in Kherson gymnasium worked as a gymnasium teacher of physics and mathematics at gymnasiums of Taganrog, particularly the Chekhov Gymnasium. In 1875 Edmund Dzerzhinsky retired due to health conditions and moved with his family to his estate near Ivyanets and Rakaw, Russian Empire (today Belarus). In 1882 Felix's father died from tuberculosis.
As a youngster Dzerzhinsky was fluent in three languages: Polish, Russian and Latin. He attended the Vilno gymnasium 1887–95. One of the older students at this gymnasium was his future arch-enemy, Józef Piłsudski. Years later, as Marshal of Poland, Piłsudski generously recalled that Dzerzhinsky "distinguished himself as a student with delicacy and modesty. He was rather tall, thin and demure, making the impression of an ascetic with the face of an icon.... Tormented or not, this is an issue history will clarify; in any case this person did not know how to lie." School documents show that Dzerzhinsky attended his first year in school twice, while his eighth year he was not able to finish. Dzerzhinsky received his school diploma that was stating following, "Dzerzhinsky Feliks who is 18 years of age, of catholic faith, along with a satisfactory attention and satisfactory diligence showed following successes in sciences, namely: Divine law - "good"; Logic, Latin, Algebra, Geometry, Mathematical geography, Physics, History (of Russia), French - "satisfactory"; Russian and Greek - "unsatisfactory".
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