Konstanty Gebert

Konstanty Gebert, Warsaw (Poland), October 11, 2005

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.

Biography

Early life

Gebert was born in Warsaw and is the son of top communist official Bolesław Gebert.

Activism in Poland's Anticommunist Opposition

In 1978 Gebert was one of the main organisers of the so-called Flying University, a secret institution of higher education educating people on various topics forbidden by the communist 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.

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

In a January 9, 2014 lecture 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. Personally, I do not think it is all that important, and for a very simple reason. In Central Europe, with the one exception of Czechoslovakia, democratic traditions, such as they were, never played a major 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.”^[2]

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. , Post-Communist Europe: Twenty Five Years after the Collapse of the Ancient Regime, Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs VIII:2 (2014) pp 87-100 .