Szymon Datner (

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...

, 2 February 1902 – 8 December 1989,

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

) was a Polish historian,

Holocaust survivor Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no universally accep ...

and

underground Underground most commonly refers to: * Subterranea (geography), the regions beneath the surface of the Earth Underground may also refer to: Places * The Underground (Boston), a music club in the Allston neighborhood of Boston * The Underground ...

operative from Białystok, best known for his studies of the

Nazi war crimes The governments of the German Empire and Nazi Germany (under Adolf Hitler) ordered, organized and condoned a substantial number of war crimes, first in the Herero and Namaqua genocide and then in the First and Second World Wars. The most notabl ...

and events 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; ...

in the Białystok

region In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as zones, lands or territories, are areas that are broadly divided by physical characteristics ( physical geography), human impact characteristics ( human geography), and the interaction of humanity an ...

. His 1946 ''Walka i zagłada białostockiego ghetta'' was one of the first studies of the

Białystok Ghetto The Białystok Ghetto ( pl, getto w Białymstoku) was a Nazi ghetto set up by the German SS between July 26 and early August 1941 in the newly formed District of Bialystok within occupied Poland. About 50,000 Jews from the vicinity of Białyst ...

Life to 1945

In 1928 Datner settled in Białystok. Before the outbreak of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, he worked as a physical-education teacher at a Jewish secondary school in Białystok. He lived in that city with his wife and two daughters through the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland. After the German attack on the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

, he was forced with his family into the

. On 24 May 1943 he helped smuggle several persons out of the Ghetto. However, his wife and daughters did not survive its liquidation.

Postwar career

After the war, Datner served for two years as head of the Białystok branch of the Central Committee of Jews in Poland (''CŻKH''). "A survivor himself, he deposited his own testimony at the Jewish Historical Commission in Białystok on 28 September 1946." The same year, the ''CŻKH'' published his ''Walka i zagłada Białostockiego Ghetta'' (The Struggle and Destruction of the Białystok Ghetto). In the late 1940s Datner moved to

. He became a prominent specialist on World War II crimes and

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; ...

. Of

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

extraction, he was dismissed from his post during the

1968 Polish political crisis The Polish 1968 political crisis, also known in Poland as March 1968, Students' March, or March events ( pl, Marzec 1968; studencki Marzec; wydarzenia marcowe), was a series of major student, intellectual and other protests against the ruling Pol ...

but was rehabilitated soon after. In 1969–70 he presided over

Jewish Historical Institute The Jewish Historical Institute ( pl, Żydowski Instytut Historyczny or ''ŻIH''; yi, ייִדישער היסטאָרישער אינסטיטוט), also known as the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, is a public cultural and research ...

, and he was one of the historians at the . According to

Bernd Wegner Bernd Wegner (born 1949) is a German historian who specialises in military history and the history of Nazism. Since 1997 he has been professor of modern history at the Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg, Germany. Wegner is a contributor to t ...

, Datner drew up the most comprehensive documentation of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

's war crimes and atrocities in eastern Poland. In 1966 he published an article on "The Extermination of the Jewish Population in the District of Bialystok" (mentioning the

Jedwabne pogrom The Jedwabne pogrom was a massacre of Polish Jews in the town of Jedwabne, German-occupied Poland, on 10 July 1941, during World War II and the early stages of the Holocaust. At least 340 men, women and children were murdered, some 300 of whom ...

); however, due to

censorship in the Polish People's Republic Censorship in Communist Poland was primarily performed by the Polish ' (''Główny Urząd Kontroli Prasy, Publikacji i Widowisk''), a governmental institution created in 1946 by the pro-Soviet Provisional Government of National Unity with Stalin's ...

he could not write on killing of Jews by Poles. states that Datner wrote in similar vain to authors engaging in "heroic-martyrological discourse". Alexander B. Rossino names Datner as ''the eminent historian of Wehrmacht war crimes in Poland''Hitler Strikes Poland: litzkrieg, Ideology, and Atrocity - Page 185 Alexander B. Rossino · University Press of Kansas 2003

Death

Datner died in 1989 in

and was interred at the

Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery The Warsaw Jewish Cemetery is one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe and in the world. Located on Warsaw's Okopowa Street and abutting the Christian Powązki Cemetery, the Jewish necropolis was established in 1806 and occupies 33 hectar ...

Publications

*''Walka i Zagłada białostockiego getta'' (

Łódź Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of cant ...

, 1946) *''Zbrodnie Wehrmachtu na jeńcach wojennych w II wojnie światowej'' (

, 1961) *''Zbrodnie okupanta w czasie powstania warszawskiego w 1944 roku (w dokumentach)'' (Warsaw, 1962) *''Wilhelm Koppe - nieukarany zbrodniarz hitlerowski'' (Warsaw-

Poznań Poznań () is a city on the River Warta in west-central Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business centre, and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint Joh ...

, 1963) *''Ucieczki z niewoli niemieckiej 1939-1945'' (Warsaw, 1966) *''Eksterminacja ludności żydowskiej w Okręgu Białostockim'' (Bulletin of the Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw, October–December 1966, ) *''Niemiecki okupacyjny aparat bezpieczeństwa w okręgu białostockim (1941–1944) w świetle materiałów niemieckich (opracowania Waldemara Macholla)'', Biuletyn GKBZH (Warsaw, 1965) *''55 dni Wehrmachtu w Polsce'' (Warsaw, 1967) *''Las sprawiedliwych. Karta z dziejów ratownictwa Żydow w okupowanej Polsce'' ( Warsaw, 1968) *''Tragedia w Doessel - (ucieczki z niewoli niemieckiej 1939-1945 ciąg dalszy)'' (Warsaw, 1970) *''Z mądrości Talmudu'' (Warsaw, 1988)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Datner, Szymon 1902 births 1989 deaths 20th-century Polish historians Polish male non-fiction writers Białystok Ghetto inmates Schoolteachers from Białystok Writers from Kraków Jewish resistance members during the Holocaust