“An Unfulfilled Writer Who Became a Historian”. Jerzy Wojciech Borejsza (22 August 1935 – 28 July 2019)

Abstract

Jerzy Wojciech Borejsza was the son of communist activist Jerzy Borejsza, referred to as an ‘international communist’, and Ewa née Kantor. His grandfather Abraham Goldberg was one of the leaders of Polish Zionists. Borejsza described himself as ‘a Pole of Jewish origin’. His personality was greatly influenced by the Second World War experiences, including the pogrom of Jews in German-occupied Lwów in July 1941 and the tragic events of occupied Warsaw. As a result of the decision of the communist party authorities, in 1952, Borejsza was sent to study in the Soviet Union, first to Kazan, then to Moscow. This made it impossible for him to study Polish philology in Warsaw; Borejsza, therefore, chose historical studies. After returning to Poland in 1957, he undertook research on the history of Polish emigration after the January Uprising (1863–4). He was also interested in the history of the Polish socialist movement and its connections to socialism in Western Europe. Later, Borejsza intervened in the historiography of the Crimean War (1853–6), intending to bring this forgotten armed conflict back to light. He coined the phrase ‘the beautiful nineteenth century’, in contrast to the twentieth century as a time of hatred, extermination, and the Holocaust. Initially, Borejsza worked at the Polish Academy of Sciences (1958–64), then at the University of Warsaw (1964–75). In the early 1970s, he began research on Italian fascism and Italy’s unsuccessful attempts to create a fascist International. He also conducted research on the worldview of Adolf Hitler, formulating the view that, apart from anti-Semitism, another vital component of the Führer’s racism was anti-Slavism. Borejsza was the author of a textbook on totalitarian and authoritarian systems in Europe in 1918–45 (entitled Schools of Hatred). After the anti-Semitic campaign launched by the communist authorities in March 1968, he was removed from the University of Warsaw (1975). From then until the end of his life, he worked at the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. In the years 2004–12, he was also employed at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. In the last years of his life, he researched Russian archives, dealing with the history of communism as a totalitarian system and the Comintern’s attitude toward Poland and Stalinist persecution of Polish communists. Jerzy W. Borejsza was an outstanding Polish researcher of the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He also witnessed the tragic history of the century of extermination.