YIVO Mourns the Passing of Marian Turski, z"l

YIVO mourns the passing of Marian Turski (born Moyshe Turbowicz), renowned Polish-Jewish historian and journalist. A survivor of the Łódź Ghetto, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald, Turski strove for justice. While visiting the U.S. in 1965, he participated in the march from Selma to Montgomery with Dr. Martin Luther King. He served on the boards of the Jewish Historical Society of Poland, the Association of Jews, War Veterans and Other Victims of the Second World War II, the International Auschwitz Council, and the Polin Museum.

When Turski visited YIVO in 2016, he found his own signature in the Łódź Ghetto “Book of the Children,” a hand-painted book given to Judenrat head Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski as a gift for Rosh Hashanah of 1942. The book contains the signature of every school child in the ghetto—nearly 14,000 in total. Approximately 200 children survived. Upon finding his own signature in the book, he nearly fainted when he saw that the signature of his best friend, Dawid Sierakowiak was next to his. Sierakowiak, sadly, did not survive the war.