Marian Turkish, surviving and historian, died at 98 at the age of 98

Poland survived the Holocaust, historian and journalist Marian Turkish died at the age of 98.

Born in 1926, Mr. Turkish survived in the Lodz Ghetto, a camp to destroy Auschwitz-Birkenau and two marches of death as a teenager.

He later devoted himself to history and journalism in the post-war Poland, he co-founded the remarkable Jewish Museum of Warsaw and became president of the Auschwitz International Committee.

He attracted the international attention to the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz’s Liberation in 2020 when he noted that Auschwitz “did not fall from the sky” and warned that this could happen again.

D, Turkish was born as Moshe Turtuch and spent much 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 created in the city, which is struck by disease, hunger and forced labor.

In 1944, his parents and his younger brother were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where Mr. Turkish, still a teenager, should arrive two weeks later in one of the latest Transport from Lodz Ghetto.

The father and brother of the Turkish were killed in gas chambers while his mother was sent to work at Bergen Belsen camp in northern Germany.

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

He first headed to the Becenwald concentration camp and later to Terezin, where he was released on the verge of death from exhaustion and typhus.

He said he seemed to have amnesia after he left Auschwitz, where he did not return for 20 years.

“I could never forget I’m in Auschwitz because I have a number tattooed on my hand and see it every day,” he He said at the Polish output Onet.

“However, after the war, I was struck by amnesia … I remembered perfectly separate episodes: arriving at the camp, several other things, some stories from the marches of death. Everything else was blurred.”

He rejected a proposal to migrate the West after the war, instead returned home hoping to build a socialist Poland.

D, Turkish studied history at the University of Uroclaw, during which time he was involved in journalism and worked in political communications.

In 1958, he became the editor of the History of Polityka magazine, from which he continued to become an influential journalist and historian.

Turkish attracted international attention to the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz’s Liberation in 2020, noting that Auschwitz “did not fall from the sky”.

She approached “in small steps as the incident happened here,” he said.

He said that the eleventh Bible order must be “you will not be indifferent.”

“Because if you are indifferent, before you know it, another Auschwitz will come out of the blue for you or your descendants,” he warned.

He was one of the four survivors who Talk again at the 80th anniversary in January.

He warned the world leaders gathered by the camp’s gates that “we can observe a significant rise in anti -Semitism in today’s world, and yet it is anti -Semitism that led to the Holocaust.”

Poland’s chief rabbi Michael Sudrich said the Jewish community would miss a lot of Turkish.

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

“He was penetrated into Jewish wisdom and used it to direct us how to face today’s problems. We are so blessed that we had Marian with us for so many years.”

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that the words of the Turkish became “motto for us”.

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

Polityka magazine called G -N Turski “an exceptional man, witness of the ages, our friend,” whose voice was heard “all over the world”.