Michel Borwicz (1911–1987)

Michel or Michal Borwicz (né Maksymilian Boruchowicz) was born to a secular Jewish family in Kraków, Poland. He studied philosophy at the Jagiellonian University. In the 1930s, he published several literary works, including a novel. After Nazi Germany invaded Poland at the start of World War II, he fled to Soviet-controlled territory in eastern Poland; and after the German invasion of the USSR in 1941, he returned home. In 1942, he was deported to the Lemberg-Janowska concentration and forced labor camp on the outskirts of Lvov. He was sentenced to death by hanging but the rope broke and spared him from execution. He escaped the camp in September 1943 and joined the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) resistance group as Michał Borwicz. In the Home Army, he commanded an armed unit. Even before the end of the war, he was working with the Jewish Historical Institute, the research body founded in Lublin in 1944. In early 1947, Borwicz and his colleague Joseph Wulf made a trip to Sweden on behalf of the Institute, but did not return to Poland, as they saw themselves threatened by anti-Semitism and political developments there. In June, they traveled to Paris, where they gave lectures, criticizing the falsification of the history of the Jewish resistance by the Polish Communists. Borwicz stayed in Paris and studied sociology at the Sorbonne, receiving his doctorate in 1953. He published more than a dozen books and articles on the history of the Nazi extermination of the Jews and the Jewish resistance. He directed the Centre d'etude de l'histoire des Juifs Polonais (Center for Research on the History of the Jews of Poland) in Paris until his death. He married Dr. Zila Rennert, a physician and fellow survivor.