Danuta Dąbrowska, Historian, Dies at 90

She was born Jakoba Blidsztejn - "Kubusia" to her friends. However, till the end of her days, she maintained the name she had assumed whilst in hiding on the Aryan side during World War II.

She was born in Berlin in 1925, the daughter of so-called "Eastern Jews" - Polish Jews who had settled in Germany (both her parents were medical doctors in practice there). Upon her parents' return to Poland, she grew up within the Warsaw Housing Co-operative area in the Warsaw suburb of Żoliborz. They had Aryan papers, but repeatedly survived the blackmailing threats of the szmalcownicy. Despite this, to the end of her life, Danuta Dąbrowska remained cheerful and never judged people too harshly. She was full of understanding towards all people, even the bad.

In "Ocaleni", a film produced for the Museum POLIN, in which she was one of the heroes, she recalled one instance of blackmail thus, "The Navy Blues (Polish Police) came to search our home on Wyspiańska Street. They took whatever they could find as I remember. What I regretted most, and almost brought me to tears, was that they took my fountain pen which had a gold nib. I remember it to this day. I was a big girl, after all. I was such an idiot!

'It would generally go this way. They'd come the first time and take everything. They'd then return later and take the Jews to the Gestapo for a kilogram of sugar or a bottle of vodka. All glory to them! I'm not being cynical here. Everything's relative, isn't it - even amongst rogues." 

Following the War, she graduated in Romance Studies at Warsaw University. She was in contact with Zionist organizations as she wanted to leave for Israel. However, she remained in Poland. In her private life, she began a relationship with Edmund Gonczarski, a journalist at "Po prostu" magazine. They had one daughter.

She began working at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. She published the ŻIH Bulletin and also the Bleter far Geshichte in Yiddish. Together with Lucjan Dobroszycki, she wrote and published two monumental volumes - The Chronicles of the the Łódż Ghetto - based on documents which had survived and were stored during War in the archives of the Jewish Council (Judenrat) in Łódż. Two further volumes, ready to be printed, were destroyed in the anti-Semitic events of March 1968. A complete edition of the Chronicles was only published in 2009 thanks to the efforts of historians at the National Archives in Łódż and Łódż University.

In 1968, as a result of the anti-Semitic campaign, Danuta and her daughter left for Israel. Until her retirement, she worked at the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem where, in the 1970's, together with Abraham Wein and Aharon Weiss, she produced an encyclopedia of Jewish communities in Poland (Pinkas ka'kehillot Polin). To this day, that work serves as one of the most important historiographic studies of Jewish life in Poland up to the outbreak of World War II.

Danuta Dąbrowska passed away on 17th April 2015, in Israel, at the age of 90.

Read Danuta Dąbrowska detailed biography written by Jadwiga Rytlowa.

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"Kubusia, you were an outstanding Jewish and Polish historian, a person of erudition, multilingual, possessing an extraordinary sense of humour, able to distance herself and having unique charm. Following 1968, you never returned to Poland. You happily made your mark in Israel. The Polish audience loved you from the moment you appeared in our film. You spent your final years in a retirement home in Givatayim. I am so very pleased to have had the honour of exchanging a few letters with you. I remember our final meeting last January. Small and delicate, you were sitting in a large armchair. Next to you was a noisy oxygen machine. I only took notes. I filmed nothing. I didn't even take your photo. You lived on the top floor. The window of your small apartment had one of the most beautiful views of Tel Aviv. It was raining. After the rain, the sun emerged. I tried to open the window. It would not have been you if you hadn't have commented jokingly, You won't manage to do that without vodka." - Joanna Król, together with Karolina Dzięciołowska a co-author of the film "Ocaleni".

English translation: Andrew Rajcher