Holocaust survivor, historian, and journalist Marian Turski, who devoted his life to keeping the memory of Nazi crimes alive, has died at the age of 98, Polish weekly magazine Polityka reported on Tuesday.
Calling Turski “an extraordinary guardian of memory,” Polityka, where he was a columnist, expressed admiration for his long years of service in journalism and Holocaust remembrance.
Born Moshe Turbowicz on June 26, 1926, in what is now Lithuania, Turski was deported to the Lodz Ghetto at age 14. In 1944, he was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where his father and brother died. He endured two savage death marches before being freed from Theresienstadt by Soviet troops in 1945.
After the war, Turski immigrated to Warsaw, where he became a journalist and historian and joined Polityka in 1958. He wrote a number of books and helped build the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews. In 2018, he was declared an honorary citizen of Warsaw.
Turski was a strong critic of antisemitism. Addressing the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation in January, he cautioned against increasing hate. “Antisemitism led to the Holocaust,” he stated, calling on people to settle disputes peacefully.
More than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, died at Auschwitz, and over 3 million Polish Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically exterminated 6 million Jews, along with other persecuted groups.
Turski’s contributions to Holocaust remembrance and his dedication to historical truth leave a lasting legacy.
