Jerzy Jedlicki
14 June 1930-31 January 2018
Jerzy Jedlicki (known to his friends as Jurek), a leading Polish social historian, died at the end of January at the age of 88. He was born into an assimilated Jewish family from Lwów, who decided not to circumcise him as a result of which ‘I was able to survive the war’ (Gazeta Wyborcza, 2 February 2018). He grew up in Warsaw, where his father was a successful chemical engineer and, along with his brother Witold, a leading émigré Polish sociologist who died in 1995, was baptised by his parents as a Protestant in 1935. His mother was baptised as a Roman Catholic in 1940, but not his father. When the Warsaw ghetto was established, the family changed its name to Jedlicki and the two boys were accepted as Roman Catholics by the Jesuits. Jurek, his brother and mother were able to survive on the ‘aryan’ side with forged documents, but his father was denounced by a Polish acquaintance and murdered by the Nazis.
He studied sociology at the University of Warsaw, where he had a distinguished career in the the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Science and where, after 1989, he became head of its workshop on the history of the intelligentsia. However, because of his criticism of the communist government, it was only then that he was awarded the title of full professor. He was also a member of the Collegium Invisibile, an elite academic society established in 1995, which seeks to bring together outstanding Polish students in the humanities and sciences with a distinguished scholars in order to participate in original research projects and individual tutorials modelled on the Oxford system.
He joined the Polish United Workers’ Party in 1953 but was soon disillusioned when he became aware of how the documents of the history of Polish communism were falsified in official publications. He initially placed his hope in the internal reform of the party but finally resigned from it in response to the antisemitic campaign of 1968. He was a member of the opposition discussion group, the Club of the Crooked Circle (Klub Krzywego Koła), one of the signatories of Memoriał 101, the protest of intellectuals against the proposed changes in the Polish constitution in 1976, and, from 1977, one of the organizers of the Flying University (Uniwersytet Latający) and of the Society for Scholarly Courses (Towarzystwo Kursów Naukowych) which grew out of it. He also conducted private seminars on European political thought at his home—among those who participated were, among others, Marcin Król, Paweł Śpiewak and Adam Michnik. He was a co-author of ‘The Appeal of the 64’ of 20 August 1980 which supported the demands of the striking shipyard workers in Gdańsk and became a prominent member of Solidarity. During martial law was interned from December 1981 to July 1982. After his release he wrote extensively for underground publications, above all Krytyka, Nowy Zapis and Tygodnik Mazowsze.
After the negotiated end of communism in 1989, he was actively involved in the Pen Club. He was greatly disturbed by the persistence in democratic Poland of antisemitism, from which he had personally suffered as a child during the war when he was attacked in a streetcar as a ‘żydek’ (Jewboy) and when he heard from his classmates hostile references to Jews during the Warsaw ghetto uprising of April 1943. Most painful for him was his exclusion from active participation in the underground scouting organization when one of his classmates revealed his Jewish origins. Writing of this period in Gazeta Wyborcza on 3 May 2013, he observed
Anyone with even a superficial acquaintance with the underground press during the war is well aware that antisemitism was then, with a few praiseworthy exceptions—such as Biuletyn Informacyjny or the leftist press—almost universal and that only a small number of the members of the underground became conscious, particularly in 1943, that this gave it a doubtful character from the ethical point of view.
Contemporary efforts to contradict this aroused his anger. ‘Why are you today, gentlemen, trying to deny this. That’s how it was and nothing can change it’.
On another occasion he wrote:
Hatred of the Jews, contempt and mockery were a part of the culture of Central Europe in the twentieth century and thus also of Polish culture. I do not want to suggest that the whole society was willing to engage in criminal activity. But the mass murder of the Jews was accompanied by the pleasure (uciecha) of a significant part of the the Polish environment (otoczenie). This pleasure, this laughter, which accompanied the Holocaust, I remember because I was then on the other, ‘aryan’ side of the wall. Until today, our attitude and also my own has been to flee from this topic, out of a cowardly fear of the dark side of our common past.
This led him to be one of the founders of the Association for Combating Antisemitism and Xenophobia—the Open Republic (Stowarzyszenia Przeciwko Antysemityzmowi i Ksenofobii—Otwarta Rzeczpospolita) and chair of its Programming Council. In 2011, he received the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Reborn Poland and in 2015, the Prize of the Foundation for the Support of Polish Scholarship, popularly known as the Polish Nobel prize.
Jurek was a prolific writer. Among his most important works are Nieudana próba kapitalistycznej industrializacji. Analiza państwowego gospodarstwa przemysłowego w Królestwie Polskim XX w. (An unsuccessful attempt at capitalist industrialization. An analysis of state-owned industry in the Kingdom of Poland, Warsaw, 1964); Klejnot i bariery społeczne: przeobrażenia szlachectwa polskiego w schyłkowym okresie feudalizmu, (Jewels and social barriers: the transformation of the Polish nobility at the end of the feudal period, Warsaw, 1968); Jakiej cywilizacji Polacy potrzebują: studia z dziejów idei i wyobraźni XIX wieku, (What sort of civilization do Poles need: a study of the history of ideas and social imagination in the nineteenth century, Warsaw 1988) translated into English as A Suburb of Europe: Polish Nineteenth Century Approaches to Western Civilization (Budapest, 1999); Źle urodzeni, czyli o doświadczeniu historycznym (Badly born, or on historical experience, London, 1993); Świat zwyrodniały. Lęki i wyroki krytyków nowoczesnoći (A degenerate world. The fears and judgements of the critics of modernity, Warsaw, 2000), translated into English as A degenerate world (Frankfurt am Main, 2016), Błędne Koło: 1832-1864 (Warsaw, 2008) translated into English as The vicious circle: 1832-1864 ((Frankfurt am Main, 2014) and volume 2 of Dzieje inteligencji polskiej do roku 1918 (Warsaw 2008), for which he was awarded the Jerzy Giedroyc prize. He was also the editor of the other two volumes of this three volume work, which were written by Maciej Janowski and Magdalena Micińska. All three volumes were translated into English as A history of the Polish intelligentsia (Frankfurt am Main, 2014).
In his work, he attempted to deflate Polish national myths. In Jakiej cywilizacji Polacy potrzebują, he wrote:
…the specific combination of a collective inferiority complex with the national megalomania, which is intended to compensate for this, seems to be typical of the educated strata of outlying countries. It is hard and painful to acknowledge even to oneself the peripheral and marginal situation of one’s country and its culture. However, without such an acknowledgement it is very difficult to formulate a clear strategy for how to emerge from it.
At the same time, he also stressed that what united all the participants in these painful debates in the nineteenth century was a quality which he shared and which he believed was essential if Poland was to emerge as a successful modern country—‘hope’. Without this, ‘the humiliated nation would be consumed by worries about the futility of everyday existence’.
Jurek was a gifted and percipient scholar, a person who loved a good argument, a good friend and a stimulating conversationalist. He stoically bore the pain with which he was afflicted in his last years. His was a voice of reason and tolerance, civilized debate and rational discussion which will be sorely missed. We express our deepest condolences to his daughter.
Antony Polonsky