Bronislaw Geremek

Bronisław Geremek was born as Benjamin Lewertow in Warsaw on 6 March 1932 into a Jewish family. At barely 8 years old, he experienced exclusion and the stigma of the yellow star, followed by a life of hardship, hunger and brutal repression in the ghetto. He escaped from the ghetto in 1942 with his mother and was sheltered by Stefan Geremek, who later became his stepfather. After the war, he adopted the name Bronisław and was raised in a Roman Catholic tradition. He graduated from the Faculty of History at the Warsaw University in 1954 and completed postgraduate studies at the École pratique des hautes études in Paris in 1956–1958. He obtained his PhD in 1960 and his postdoctoral degree in 1972 at the Polish Academy of Sciences, where he worked as a researcher and professor of history. He specialized in the history of culture and medieval society and published several books and articles on these topics. He also lectured at the Sorbonne and managed the Polish Culture Centre of that university from 1960 to 1965. In the 1970s, he became involved in the opposition movement against the communist regime in Poland. He joined the Workers' Defence Committee in 1976 and the Solidarity trade union in 1980. He was one of the advisers of Lech Wałęsa and a participant of the Round Table Talks in 1989 that led to the peaceful democratic transition of Poland. He was elected to the Sejm in 1989 as a Solidarity candidate and served as a member of parliament until 2001. He was one of the founders of the Citizens' Movement for Democratic Action and later the Freedom Union, two liberal political parties. He was also a member of the European Convention that drafted the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. From 1997 to 2000, he served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland under the government of Jerzy Buzek. He played a key role in the NATO enlargement and the accession of Poland to the European Union. He was also the Chairman of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in 1998. In 2004, he was elected to the European Parliament as a member of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. He was a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Subcommittee on Human Rights. He was also a member of the European Parliament delegation for relations with the United States. He died in a car accident near Lubień on 13 July 2008. He was buried at the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw. He was awarded several national and international honors, including the Order of the White Eagle, the highest Polish decoration, and the Legion of Honour, the highest French distinction. He was also an honorary doctor of several universities, such as the University of Bologna, Utrecht University, the Sorbonne, Columbia University, Waseda University, and Jagiellonian University. He was widely regarded as one of the most prominent and respected Polish intellectuals and statesmen of the 20th and 21st centuries.