Ludwik Maurycy Landau (31 May 1902 in

Tomaszów Mazowiecki Tomaszów Mazowiecki (, yi, טאָמעשעוו or ''Tomashuv'') is a city in central Poland with 60,529 inhabitants (2021). The fourth most populous city in the Łódź Voivodeship and the second with free public transport. In Tomaszów Mazowiec ...

29 February 1944) was a Polish economist and statistician, a member of the

Polish resistance movement in World War II The Polish resistance movement in World War II (''Polski ruch oporu w czasie II wojny światowej''), with the Polish Home Army at its forefront, was the largest underground resistance movement in all of occupied Europe, covering both German a ...

, and a victim of

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

Life

Ludwik Maurycy Landau was born into a family of

intelligentsia The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the in ...

on 31 May 1902. He graduated in law at

Warsaw University The University of Warsaw ( pl, Uniwersytet Warszawski, la, Universitas Varsoviensis) is a public university in Warsaw, Poland. Established in 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country offering 37 different fields of ...

. After graduation he was employed at the Central Statistical Office and at the Institute for Research into Business Cycles and Prices (''Instytut Badań Koniunktur Gospodarczych i Cen'') and the Institute of Social Economy (''Instytut Gospodarstwa Społecznego''). His study on social income in Poland around 1929–1933, co-authored with

Michał Kalecki Michał Kalecki (; 22 June 1899 – 18 April 1970) was a Polish Marxian economist. Over the course of his life, Kalecki worked at the London School of Economics, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford and Warsaw School of Economics an ...

, was pioneering. Landau's 1936 firing from the Institute for Research into Business Cycles and Prices (together with Kalecki and Marek Breit) was seen as politically motivated and engineered by a senior member of the Polish government, the economist and politician

Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski (30 December 1888, Kraków – 22 August 1974, Kraków) was a Polish politician and economist, Deputy Prime Minister of Poland, government minister and manager of the Second Polish Republic. Biography He studied at the pr ...

. During the

German invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week afte ...

and the siege of Warsaw, Landau took part in civil defense. During the subsequent occupation, he continued his research. He participated in underground education programs and worked with the

Polish Underground State The Polish Underground State ( pl, Polskie Państwo Podziemne, also known as the Polish Secret State) was a single political and military entity formed by the union of resistance organizations in occupied Poland that were loyal to the Gover ...

, preparing reports on the status of the wartime Polish economy. He supported the wartime

Polish Socialist Party – Freedom, Equality, Independence Polish Socialist Party – Freedom, Equality, Independence ( pl, Polska Partia Socjalistyczna - Wolność, Równość, Niepodległość, PPS-WRN) was an underground political party in occupied Poland during World War II continuing the traditions o ...

, helped design their early wartime manifesto on the economy, and in 1940–1942 edited their underground newspaper. In August 1940 he was forced to move to the newly created

Warsaw Ghetto The Warsaw Ghetto (german: Warschauer Ghetto, officially , "Jewish Residential District in Warsaw"; pl, getto warszawskie) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the G ...

. He was able to escape from the ghetto with his family and spent the next couple of years in hiding in the city's Włochy district. Around 1943 and 1944 he was blackmailed by ''szmalcownik''s. On 29 February 1944, after leaving home, he went missing; in the next days, the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...

arrested his family; his daughter committed suicide, and his wife was shot.

Works

Landau published a number of academic papers and studies pertaining to economics and law. One of his areas of expertise was the distribution of

gross national income The gross national income (GNI), previously known as gross national product (GNP), is the total domestic and foreign output claimed by residents of a country, consisting of gross domestic product (GDP), plus factor incomes earned by foreign ...

among the

social class A social class is a grouping of people into a set of Dominance hierarchy, hierarchical social categories, the most common being the Upper class, upper, Middle class, middle and Working class, lower classes. Membership in a social class can for ...

es. From the start of the occupation, Landau kept a diary discussing the effects of the wartime conditions on the Polish people, including the country's Jews. The diary contained valuable statistical data. It survived the war and was published in three volumes (1962–1963) as ''Kronika lat wojny i okupacji'' (''Chronicle of the Wartime Occupation''); it has been called "an important source for understanding living conditions during World War II from a social-science perspective".

Life

Works

See also

References

Further reading