Andrzej J. Kamiński

Andrzej J. Kaminski in 1976

Andrzej Józef Kamiński (born June 20, 1921 in Warsaw , Poland ; † February 4, 1985 in Hagen , Germany ) was a Polish historian specializing in the history of Germany . His focus was the time of National Socialism and its effects on the German present.

biography

His parents, Natalia Szper-Kaminska and Joseph Szper were both doctors.

In 1939 he graduated from the Stefan-Batory-Gymnasium in Warsaw. In September 1939 he volunteered in the defense of Poland against the Nazi attack (southern front). During the Nazi occupation, he took his mother's family name because his father was of Jewish descent.

From 1939 to 1944 he was a resistance fighter in the Home Army , mostly in Radom . On March 7, 1944, he was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo . On March 21 of this year, he was deported to the Groß-Rosen concentration camp (Pole prisoner no. 23351). There he worked in the camp clerk's office as a clerk and interpreter for German-French. In the course of the KL evacuation he came to the Leitmeritz satellite camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp , where he was given the number 87499.

In May 1945 he was liberated in Prague and took part in the Prague uprising. From October 1945 to 1948 he studied law at the University of Poznan . In July 1951 he received his doctorate. phil. in the field of modern German history. In 1964 he completed his habilitation. From December 1946 to February 1958 he was a research assistant at the West Institute in Poznan.

From 1962 to 1973 he worked as an independent research assistant at the Polish Institute for International Affairs in Warsaw. He was a lecturer in modern history and contemporary history at the University of Poznan (1951–1956), at the University of Warsaw (1957–1964) and at the University of Foreign Service in Warsaw (1957–1960).

In 1973 he was forced to leave Poland after five of his books were not allowed to appear in Poland; including a biography of Willy Brandt : Willy Brandt, man, politician, statesman . He then taught contemporary history as a visiting professor at various universities in the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1977 he was appointed professor at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal .

Publications in Polish

(Polish title in German translation)

• Germany's position at the first Hague Conference of 1899, (German summary), Posen 1962.
• German militarism. Main social and political issues, Warsaw 1962.
• Neo-Nazism. Ideology, propaganda, forms of impact and development conditions of the neo-Nazi movement, (German summary), Posen 1962.
• The National Socialist Concentration Camps and Institutions of Mass Extermination in the Politics of German Imperialism, (English summary), Posen 1964.
• In the footsteps of the Ostmarkenverein. The role of the “Landsmannschaften” in the politics of the Federal Republic of Germany, (German summary), Warsaw 1966.
• Fascism (a popular science abstract), Warsaw 1971.

Publications in German

• National Socialist occupation policy in Poland and Czechoslovakia 1939–1945, Bremen 1975.
• From a police state to a civil state, On the history of democracy using the example of a German city, Peter Hammer Verlag, Wuppertal, 1976.
• Concentration Camps 1896 to Today, An Analysis. Verlag W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, Berlin, Cologne, Mainz, 1982.
• Ditto, Piper series (Piper) Munich, Zurich, 1990.

Translations

Polish

• Nightmare of slavery, concentration camps from 1896 to today, (translated from the German by Halina Zarychta and author), Przedswit Publishing House, Warsaw, 1990.

Italian

• I campi di concetramento dal 1896 a oggi, storia, funzioni, tipologia, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 1997 and 1998.

Web links

• Literature by and about Andrzej J. Kamiński in the catalog of the German National Library