Marian Turski, survivor and historian of the Holocaust, dies of 98 years

The survivor, historian and journalist of the Polish Holocaust, Marian Turski, died at age 98.

Born in 1926, Mr. Turski survived the Lodz Ghetto, the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp and two death marches when he was a teenager.

Later dedicating himself to history and journalism in the postwar Poland, he co -founded the historic Jewish History Museum of Warsaw and became president of the Auschwitz International Committee.

He caught international attention on the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation in 2020, when Auschwitz said “he did not fall from the sky” and warned that it could happen again.

Turski was born as Moshe Turbowicz and spent much of his childhood in the Polish city of Lodz.

After the Nazis conquered Poland in 1940, he and his family were transferred to the Jewish ghetto established in the city that was plagued with diseases, hunger and forced labor.

In 1944, his parents and his younger brother were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where Mr. Turski, even a teenager, would arrive two weeks later in one of the last transport of the Ghetto Lodz.

Mr. Turski’s brother and brother were killed in the gas cameras, while his mother was sent to work at the Bergen Belsen camp in northern Germany.

In January 1945, as the Soviet troops advanced, Mr. Turski was among the 60,000 prisoners, the Nazis forced to walk west in what was known as marches of death.

First he marched to the Buchenwald concentration camp and then to Terezin, where he was released on the verge of death by exhaustion and typhus.

He said it was as if he had Amnesia after leaving Auschwitz, where he did not return for 20 years.

“I could never forget that I was in Auschwitz, because I have a number tattooed on my arm and I see it every day,” he He told Polish Outlet Onet.

“However, after the war, Amnesia surprised me … I remembered the individual episodes perfectly: reach the camp, some other things, some stories of the marches of death. However, everything else was blurred.”

He rejected an offer to migrate west after the war, instead of returning home in the hope of building a socialist Poland.

Mr. Turski studied history at the University of Wrocław, during which he took journalism and worked in political communications.

In 1958, he became editor of the History Section of Polityka magazine, of which he became an influential journalist and historian.

Turski called international attention on the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation in 2020, and commented that Auschwitz “did not fall from heaven.”

He approached “with small steps to what happened here, it happened,” he said.

He said that the eleventh commandment of the Bible should be “you will not be indifferent.”

“Because if you are indifferent, before you realize, another Auschwitz will get out of nowhere for you or your descendants,” he warned.

It was one of the four survivors who He spoke again on the 80th anniversary in January.

He warned world leaders gathered by the doors of the camp that “we can observe a significant increase in anti -Semitism in today’s world and, nevertheless, it was precisely anti -Semitism that led to Holocaust.”

Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, said the Jewish community would miss Turski a lot.

“Marian was our teacher, he was our voice and moral mentor.

“I was immersed in Jewish wisdom and used it to guide us about how to face today’s problems. We are so blessed that we had Marian with us for so many years.”

The Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that Mr. Turski’s words had become “a motto for us.”

He wrote in X: “The 11th commandment for these difficult times.”

Polityka magazine called Mr. Turski “an extraordinary man, a witness of the centuries, our friend” whose voice was heard “worldwide.”