Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, a former Auschwitz prisoner and member of Poland's underground WWII resistance who helped save Jews and later served twice as the country's Foreign Minister, died in Warsaw at the age of 93.
For his efforts to help the Jews he was honored by the Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Memorial Jerusalem, as a "Righteous Among the Nations" in 1965. He was also an honorary citizen of Israel.
A Polish Catholic, Bartoszewski, was born in 1922 in Warsaw. The son of a bank clerk, he grew up next to Warsaw's Jewish district and had many Jewish friends.
When he was still just a teenager he fought in the defense of Warsaw against the Germans, who invaded the country in September 1939. Caught in a street roundup in Warsaw in 1940, he was sent to Auschwitz, which was first used by the Nazi Germans for Polish resistance fighters. There he was given the prison number 4427.
In a very rare occurrence, he was released in April 1941 thanks to the efforts of the Polish Red Cross, which he had worked for before his arrest.
Back in Warsaw, he wrote a detailed report from his time at the camp, the first known written witness account from Auschwitz.
Bartoszewski referred to himself as a “utopian idealist” and was one of Poland’s most respected figures, his eventful life a mirror image of Poland’s own eventful history in the past century.
“It’s a huge loss, a great Pole has left us,” said president Polish Bronislaw Komorowski while former Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who new heads the European Council, said Bartoszweski’s death was a “sad day”.
As an early member of the Solidarity trade union and ally of its leader Lech Walesa, he played his part in the transition to democracy in 1989.
In the new era he served as ambassador to Vienna and two short terms as foreign minister. In later years he dedicated his life to reconciliation between Germany and Poland.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Bartoszewski ‘’will be remembered by his countrymen as a Polish patriot who fought for freedom and democracy. In Israel he will remain forever in our hearts as one of the Righteous Among the Nations who risked his life to rescue Jews from the Nazis’’. In my meetings with him, I was deeply impressed by his humanity and erudition. His light will continue to shine."