The Polish Holocaust survivor, historian and journalist Marian Turkish died at the age of 98.
Born in 1926, Mr. Turkish survived Lodz Geto, a Auschwitz-Birkenau and two death march as a teenager.
He later dedicated himself to history and journalism in post -war Poland, confronted by the Varšavian significant Museum of Jewish History and became chairman of the International Committee of Auschwitz.
He attracted international attention to the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation in 2020, when he noted that Auschwitz “did not fall from heaven” and warned that it could be repeated.
Mr Turkish was born as Moshe Turboowicz and spent most of his childhood in the Polish city of Lodz.
After the Nazis conquered Poland in 1940, he and his family were moved to the Jewish ghetto established in a city that had plagued the disease, starvation and forced labor.
In 1944, his parents and younger brother were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau-where Mr. Turkish, another teenager, should have arrived two weeks later in one of Lodz’s last transportation.
The father and brother of Mr. Turkish were killed in gas chambers, while his mother was sent to work in Bergen Belsen camp in northern Germany.
In January 1945, as Soviet troops advanced, Mr Turkish was among the 60,000 prisoners who were forced by the Nazis to walk towards the west in what became known as the marches of death.
He first embarked on the Buchenwald concentration camp, and later in Teresa, where he was released on the verge of death from exhaustion and typhoid.
He said it was as if he had amnesia after leaving Auschwitz, where he had not returned for 20 years.
“I could never forget that I was in Auschwitz because I was tattooed on my hand and I see every day,” he said Polish Outlet Onet.
“However, after the war, Amnesia hit me … I remembered the individual episodes perfectly: coming to the camp, a few more things, some stories from the death march. However, everything else was blurred.”
He rejected an offer for migration in the west after the war, instead of returning home in the hope that he would build a socialist Poland.
Mr Turkish studied history at the University of Wrocław, and during that time he took over journalism and worked in political communication.
In 1958, he became the editor of the Division of the History of the Polity magazine, from which he became an influential journalist and historian.
‘Don’t be indifferent’
Mr. Turkish attracted international attention to the 75th anniversary of the release of Auschwitz in 2020, noting that Auschwitz “did not fall from heaven.”
He approached “with small steps as long as what happened here,” he said.
He said that the eleventh Bible command was supposed to be “you will not be indifferent.”
“Because if you are indifferent, before you find out, another Auschwitz will get out of blue for you or your offspring,” he warned.
Was one of four survivors who He spoke again on the 80th anniversary in January.
He warned the world leaders of the camp camp that “we can observe a significant increase in anti -Semitism in today’s world, and yet it was anti -Semitism to Holocaust.”
The main rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, said the Jewish community will miss the Mr. Turkish.
“Marian was our teacher, he was our moral voice and mentor.
“He was imbued with Jewish wisdom and used it to guide us how to deal with today’s problems. We are so blessed that we have had Marian with us for so many years.”
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that Mr. Turkish’s words became “motto for us.”
Wrote on X: “11. Commandment for those difficult times.”
The Polityk magazine called Mr. Turkish “Extraordinary Man, a witness to the century, our friend” whose voice was heard “all over the world.”
