Name Konstanty Gebert Role Journalist | Parents Boleslaw Gebert | |
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Books Living in the Land of Ashes, Nesim All Around Me: The Life of David Mitzner, 54 Commentaries to the Torah | ||
Konstanty Gebert | Build Democracy Not Regime
Konstanty Gebert: "Poles and Jews Divided by Common History"
Konstanty Gebert (pseudonym Dawid Warszawski; born 22 August 1953) is a Polish journalist and a Jewish activist, as well as one of the most notable war correspondents of various Polish daily newspapers.
Contents
- Konstanty Gebert Build Democracy Not Regime
- Konstanty Gebert Poles and Jews Divided by Common History
- Early life
- Activism in Polands Anticommunist Opposition
- After Communism
- References
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.”