Marian Turski, a Holocaust survivor who became a journalist and historian in postwar Poland and was a co-founder of Warsaw’s landmark Jewish history museum, has died
Marian Turski, a 98-year-old Holocaust survivor, journalist, and historian, has died. He survived the Lodz ghetto, two death marches, and imprisonment at Buchenwald and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Unlike many Jewish survivors, he remained in postwar Poland, co-founding Warsaw’s Jewish history museum. Turski warned against the dangers of indifference, stating that the Holocaust did not emerge suddenly but through incremental acts of discrimination. His remarks at the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz-Birkenau’s liberation in 2020 gained international attention. Critics on the political right accused him of using the anniversary for political commentary and questioned his moral authority due to his ties to Poland’s communist party before 1989. Poland’s President Andrzej Duda praised Turski for his consistent warnings about the need to combat evil. Turski was born in 1926, lost his father and brother in Auschwitz’s gas chambers, and survived the camp’s last transport. He emphasized that the number of Holocaust victims far exceeded the survivors, calling them “a tiny minority.”
