Marceli Handelsman (1882-1945)

Editor of Przegląd Historyczny in 1918–1939.

He studied law (1900–1904) at the Russian University of Warsaw, and then history and social sciences in Berlin, Paris and Zurich (PhD in 1908).  From 1915 until 1939 he worked at the University of Warsaw, where he co-founded its Institute of History (1930). Member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, the Friends of History Society, and co-founder of the International Historical Committee.

He was a polyhistor with wide-ranging interests, undertaking research in the history of law, political systems, ideas, social history, political history and the methodology of history. A medievalist, he nevertheless devoted himself particularly to the history of the nineteenth century. In the last years of his life he was interested especially in the political activities of the Hôtel Lambert. A teacher of many eminent historians including S. Arnold, A. Gieysztor, S. Kieniewicz, T. Manteuffel, M. Małowist, L. Widerszal and W. Żywczyński.

Following the outbreak of the Second World War he went into hiding because of his Jewish background. He did, however, teach at a clandestine university, and cooperated with the Propaganda and Information Bureau of the Home Army. He also worked on a biography of Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski. Arrested in July 1944, he was sent to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp and then transferred to the Nordhausen camp, where he died.