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Józef Garliński, Historian and former Auschwitz Prisoner, dies in London at 92
With great sadness, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim announces the death in London, at the age of 92, of Józef Garliński, Home Army staff officer, prisoner of Pawiak and the Auschwitz and Neuengamme concentration camps, author of numerous historical studies, president of the Polish Writers Union Abroad, and an indefatigable activist in the Polish political émigré community.
The Museum staff retains grateful memories of Józef Garliński as a long-serving member of the International Auschwitz Council, a constructive critic and wise adviser, and a friend. His memory will live on.
Historian Józef Garliński Dies in London
Nov. 30. London (PAP) – Dr. Jozef Garliński, Home Army staff officer, Auschwitz prisoner, long-serving president of the Polish Writers Union Abroad, an accomplished historian, and an activist in the Polish political émigré community, died in London at the age of 92 on November 29.
Garliński was the author of numerous studies on World War II. His books included one about “Enigma,” the German cipher machine whose codes were first cracked by Polish mathematicians.
His book Fighting Auschwitz, about the resistance movement in the camp, went through ten editions—five in English and one, published clandestinely, in Polish. Such Polish underground publishers as Przedświt and CDN reprinted his books in the 1980s.
Garliński was born in Kiev on October 13, 1913. He and his family moved to Poland in 1920. He held the key to the city of Kalisz, where he attended the liceum and passed his final school exam in 1934.
He served at the Cavalry Reserve Officer Cadet School in Grudziądz (1934-35). In September 1939, he fought at Krasnobór, Kowalów, and Suchowola as a second lieutenant in the First Light Cavalry Regiment.
After release from a POW camp, he joined the resistance movement. At 29, he became head of the Prison Department, and then of the Security Department at Home Army headquarters. Arrested in April 1943, he was imprisoned in Pawiak, Oświęcim, and Neuengamme. The Germans never identified him as a Home Army staff officer.
After the war, he searched for and found his Irish wife, Eileen Short, whom he had married in the first days of September 1939. She spent the entire war in Warsaw, serving in the Home Army and fighting in the 1944 Uprising.
As an émigré in the UK, Garliński earned his living working for the Hoover Institute and Library, selling insurance, lecturing, and writing. He completed his doctoral dissertation at the London School of Economics at the age of 59.
Devoted to community affairs, he was one of the guiding lights at the Polish Social-Cultural Centre. He defended Poland’s good name by correcting historical inaccuracies in the British media.
After being away for 48 years, Garliński visited Poland in 1991, and subsequently returned for two more visits.
