Artur Eisenbach

Artur Eisenbach (born April 7, 1906 in Nowy Sącz, died October 30, 1992 in Tel Aviv) was a Polish-Jewish historian, an expert on the history of Jews in Poland and the head of the Jewish Historical Institute between 1966 and 1968.^[1]

He studied history at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and then at the Warsaw University under Marceli Handelsman.^[1]

He was married to the sister of fellow historian, and later chronicler, Emanuel Ringelblum.^[1]

After the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, Artur along with his family escaped to Buczacz (now Buchach, Ukraine), which was the home city of his wife. As a consequence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Nazi-Soviet pact, on September 17 the Soviet Union invaded Poland and Buczacz came under Soviet occupation. Along with 1,200,000 other Poles, Artur Eisenbach was deported by the Soviets to deep within the Soviet Union. His wife and daughter however stayed behind. After the Nazi attack on Soviet Union, in July 1941, Buczacz was taken over by the Germans. Artur's wife and daughter subsequently were murdered by the Nazis.^[1]

Eisenbach returned to Poland from the Soviet Union in 1946 and settled in Warsaw. In the same year he became the chief archivist of the Jewish Historical Institute (JHI) in Warsaw.^[1]

He became the director of the JHI in 1966. In 1968, he was repressed by communist authorities of the People's Republic of Poland during the 1968 Polish political crisis ("March days") and persecuted as part of the government's anti-semitic campaign. He was fired from his post as the director of JHI, however, by standing up for the institution, he managed to save its archives and collection from the destruction that was being considered by the authorities.^{[citation needed]} Unlike many other Poles of Jewish background who left Poland after these events, Artur chose to remain in the country and continued his studies.

Artur Eisenbach worked as consultant on film Austeria by Kawalerowicz in 1982.

He emigrated to Israel towards the end of his life, in 1987, where he worked at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Yad Vashem. He died in 1992.

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e} The YIVO encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, Volume 1, pg. 463

Persondata
Name	Eisenbach, Artur
Alternative names
Short description	Historian
Date of birth	April 7, 1906
Place of birth	Nowy Sącz, Poland
Date of death	October 30, 1992
Place of death	Tel Aviv, Israel