Pioneer Historian Passes Away
Jozef Gierowski, a non-Jew who was a pioneer of Jewish studies in Poland, died last Friday at 83.
Joachim Russek, head of Krakow’s Judaica Foundation-Center for Jewish Culture, which Gierowski founded, called Gierowski a “virtuous man, eminent scholar, pillar of Polish civil society, mentor and friend” to many. “We will sorely miss him,” he said.
Born in 1922 in the Polish town of Czestochowa, Gierowski was the founding director of the Research Center on Jewish History and Culture in Poland at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University.
Established in 1986, when Gierowski was rector of the university, the center was the first Jewish studies institute at a university in postwar Poland.