Konstanty Gebert

Konstanty Gebert (pseudonym Dawid Warszawski; born 22 August 1953) is a Polish journalist[1] and a Jewish activist, as well as one of the most notable war correspondents of various Polish daily newspapers.

Konstanty Gebert, Warsaw (Poland), 11 October 2005

Biography

Early life

Gebert was born in Warsaw and is the son of top Polish United Workers' Party official and former Polish Ambassador to Turkey Bolesław Gebert. During the 1968 Polish political crisis he participated in students' demonstrations at age 15 with the expectation that his father, a former Communist Party of America organizer, would be proud of him. He commented "I was expecting he'd crack open a bottle of vodka and we'd have a great time. They locked me up at home for three days. Exactly what I would do if it happened to my kid. Fifteen years is not the right age for fighting on the streets. But what heartbreak. I thought I'd become one of the boys. Just like Dad."[2]

Activism in Poland's Anticommunist Opposition

In 1978 Gebert was one of the main organizers of the so-called Flying University, a secret institution of higher education educating people on various topics forbidden by the Eastern Bloc government of Poland. In 1980 he joined the Solidarity movement and became one of the members of the "Solidarity of Education and Technics Workers" union.

In 1989 he was one of the accredited journalists present at the Polish Round Table talks. From 1990 he has worked as a member of the Polish Council of Christians and Jews.

After Communism

Since 1992 he works in a Polish daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. As a journalist of that newspaper, he served as a war correspondent during the war in Yugoslavia. In 1992 and 1993, he also served as an advisor to Tadeusz Mazowiecki, then Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations and its representative in former Yugoslavia.

He co-founded the Media Development Investment Fund in 1995, and acted as its vice-chair until 2000.[3]

Since 1997 he has also acted as a head person of the Midrasz Polish-Jewish monthly.

He is an Associate Fellow of the European Council on Foreign Relations since 2011. He serves as "special advisor on international affairs" with nonprofit organisation Humanity in Action.[4]

In a lecture on 9 January 2014 he gave before the Israel Council on Foreign Relations, Gebert said: “People often ask about the importance of democratic traditions in Central Europe in ensuring the ultimate success of the revolution that swept away Communism. I do not think it is all that important, and for a straightforward reason. In Central Europe, with the one exception of Czechoslovakia, democratic traditions, such as they were, never played a significant role…I don’t think democratic traditions are like fruit preserves that you can take out of the larder and eat sixty-five years later.”[5]

He is a member of the European Press Prize preparatory committee.[6]

References
  1. Berger, Alan L.; Cargas, Harry J.; Nowak, Susan E. (2004). The continuing agony: from the Carmelite convent to the crosses at Auschwitz. University Press of America. pp. 148–. ISBN 978-0-7618-2803-7. Retrieved 5 June 2011.
  2. Kurlansky, Mark. (2004). 1968 : the year that rocked the world (1st ed.). New York: Ballantine. p. 119. ISBN 0-345-45581-9. OCLC 53929433.
  3. "Konstanty Gebert". Kultur Symposium Weimar. Retrieved 25 May 2020.
  4. "Konstanty Gebert". Humanity in Action. Retrieved 2020-05-25.
  5. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2015-05-09. Retrieved 2015-05-26.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link), Post-Communist Europe: Twenty Five Years after the Collapse of the Ancient Regime, Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs VIII:2 (2014) pp 87-100 .
  6. "Konstanty Gebert". European Press Prize. Retrieved 2020-05-25.
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