We note with great sadness the death of Marian Turski who passed away in Warsaw on 18 February 2025.
He was born Moshe Turbowicz in June 1926 in Druskienniki, Poland (today Druskininkai in Lithuania). During the war he was confined with his family in the Łódź ghetto from where, in August 1944, they were deported to Auschwitz, where Marian’s father and brother were murdered upon arrival. He survived a death march to the Buchenwald concentration camp in January 1945 and was liberated at Theresienstadt, after surviving a second death march from Buchenwald. His mother also survived the occupation After the war he remained in Poland where he had a successful career as a journalist, writing historical commentaries for the weekly Polityka and campaigning for human rights, social justice and Polish-Jewish understanding. He was a founder of the POLIN Museum of the History Polish Jews and Chair of its Council, President of the Board of the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland and of the Association of Jewish Veterans and Victims of the Second World War and a member of the International Auschwitz Council. He saw his activity in these bodies as embodying his eleventh commandment, ‘Thou Shalt Not be Indifferent’ and worked tirelessly to propagate this message. Shortly before his death, he gave a moving address at Auschwitz on the occasion of the commemoration of the eighty-fifth anniversary of its liberation.