Bidding Farewell to Professor Władysław Bartoszewski.
It is with great sadness that we bid farewell to Professor Władysław Bartoszewski, a member of the Advisory Board of the Museum of the Second World War, who passed away on 24 April 2015. He was one of the most eminent Poles, an ambassador of Polish-German reconciliation and co-creator of Polish diplomacy after 1989. A former prisoner of the Auschwitz concentration camp and Home Army soldier as well as a historian and social and political activist, Bartoszewski perfectly understood what importance promotion of knowledge on the Second World War had for the modern world and, more importantly, the need for international dialogue. He participated in many international conferences and symposiums devoted to the subject matter of the Second World War, the Holocaust and the Polish-German and Polish-Jewish relations. In 1995, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, he became the first Polish minister of foreign affairs to give a speech in the German Bundestag, during a special session. In 2007 he held the position of the secretary of state in the Chancellery of the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister’s Plenipotentiary for International Dialogue.
During the post-war period the communist authorities victimised Bartoszewski for his activity in the opposition. A member of the Independent Self-Governing Labour Union ‘Solidarity’ during 1980–1981, Bartoszewski was interned following the introduction of martial law. During 1983–1990 he was a visiting professor of political studies at three universities in the FRG (in Munich, Eichstaett, and Augsburg). Among his nearly 50 books and 2,000 publications on the Home Army, occupation, Warsaw Uprising, Polish-German and Polish-Jewish relations are: Ten jest z Ojczyzny mojej. Polacy z pomocą Żydom 1939–1945 [This is of my Homeland. Poles helping Jews 1939–1945] (with Zofia Lewin, 1967, 1969, 2007), 1859 dni Warszawy [1,859 days of Warsaw] (1974, 1984, 2008), Los Żydów Warszawy 1939–1943 [Fate of Warsaw Jews 1939–1945] (1983), Warto być przyzwoitym [Decency is worthwhile] (1990, 2005), Moja Jerozolima, mój Izrael [My Jerusalem, my Israel] (2005), O Niemcach i Polakach. Wspomnienia. Prognozy. Nadzieje [On Germans and Poles. Recollections. Predictions. Hopes] (2010), Mój Auschwitz [My Auschwitz] (2010), I była dzielnica żydowska w Warszawie [And there was a Jewish district in Warsaw] (2010), Kropla drąży skałę? Co mówiłem do Niemców i o Niemcach przez ponad pół wieku [Do drops of water wear away rock? What I have been telling the Germans and what I have been saying about them for over half a century] (2011).
It was great honour for us to have the opportunity to work with him.
