Other names Beniamin Goldberg Died 1952, Poland Name Jerzy Borejsza | Citizenship Polish Ethnicity Jewish | |
 | ||
Born 1905 Warsaw, Russian Empire Occupation Head of the communist press Known for Co-founder of Union of Polish Patriots | ||
Jerzy borejsza i rozpad imperium czytelnika dw jka
Jerzy Borejsza ([ˈjɛʐɨ bɔˈrɛjʂa]; born Beniamin Goldberg; 1905 in Warsaw – 1952 in Warsaw) was a Polish communist activist and writer, chief of the communist press and publishing syndicate in the Stalinist period of the People's Republic of Poland.
Contents
Biography
Borejsza was born as Beniamin Goldberg to a Polish Jewish family. He was an older brother of Józef Różański – later a member of Soviet NKVD and high-ranking interrogator in the Polish communist Ministry of Public Security. As a youth, Borejsza sympathized with the Zionist radical left and anarchic political factions. After he got in trouble with the Polish authorities, his father sponsored his residence in France. Borejsza studied engineering, then Hispanic culture at the Sorbonne, and remained deeply involved with the politics and activism of anarchism.
After his studies, Borejsza returned home and was briefly enlisted in the Polish Army in the late 1920s. In 1929 he joined the Communist Party of Poland (KPP) active in the Second Polish Republic, and was imprisoned several times in the years 1933–1935 for agitation and political propaganda.
After Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, Borejsza became a vocal supporter of the new communist regime, publishing Polish language translations of Soviet propaganda. He served as director of the Ossolineum Institute in Lwów (Lviv) in 1939–1940. After the war, he aided the transport of most of Ossolineum archives to Wrocław, following the transfer of the Polish city of Lwów to the Ukrainian SSR. He was one of the founders of the Union of Polish Patriots – precursor to the puppet government of future People's Republic of Poland. Borejsza served in the Red Army, and then the Polish First Army, reaching the rank of major.
He joined the new pro-Soviet Polish Communist party, the Polish Workers' Party, and became a deputy to the State National Council. He organized much of the communist propaganda in the early days of communist Poland, and was a leading figure in the implementing of state control over the world of Polish culture, including censorship in the People's Republic of Poland. He created the giant publishing house Czytelnik (Reader). Borejsza favored a moderate approach to culture control: what he called a "gentle revolution". He supported establishing cultural relations with the West, and himself traveled to United States and the United Kingdom. In 1948 he was one of the main organizers of the World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace in Wrocław. He fell out of favor with the Stalinist hardliners who saw him as too independent, too hard to influence, and not radical enough. His political role diminished in the late 1940s, particularly after the disabling injuries he suffered in the car accident in 1949.
Borejsza received the medal Polonia Restituta. He was buried at the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw.