Remember Marian Turski’s 11th Commandment: Thou shall not be Indifferent.
Polish Holocaust survivor, historian and journalist Marian Turski, age 98, passed away on February 18, 2025. He last spoke publicly at the 80th anniversary ceremony of the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, 2025.
Marian Turski was born in 1926 in Druskieniki as Mosze Turbowicz. He was 14 years old when he found himself in the Łódź Ghetto, where he worked for the Lewica Związkowa (Trade Unions’ Left) underground organisation. He was deported to Auschwitz in 1944. There, the Nazis murdered his father and brother. In 1945, he survived two death marches: from Auschwitz to Buchenwald in January, and from Buchenwald to Theresienstadt in April, where he was liberated on May 9. In all, he lost 39 relatives in the Holocaust.
Marian Turski was active in many Holocaust organizations.
Unlike most Holocaust survivors, Marian Turski remained in Poland after the war. After World War II, he settled in Warsaw. He graduated in history and worked as a journalist from 1958 onwards.
In 1958, he became editor of the magazine Polityka‘s history section, from which he went on to become an influential journalist and historian.
In March 1965, while on governmental scholarship to the United States, he took part in Martin Luther King’s march against racial segregation in the Southern United States: from Selma to Montgomery. Fellow marchers found out he had been in Auschwitz and asked him, “Do you think that such a thing could only happen in Germany? Or could it happen elsewhere?”
Turski replied: “It could happen to you. If civil rights are violated, if minority rights are not respected and are abolished. If the law is violated, as it happened in Selma, then such things could happen.” What to do? “You must do what you can. If you can defend the constitution, defend your rights, defend your democratic order, defend the rights of minorities — then you can overcome this.”
Marian Turski has been one of the main creators, organizers and founders, and was the Chairman of the International Museum Council at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
As president of the International Auschwitz Committee, Turski interviewed many Polish Jews, telling his story and reminding the world of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.
Thou shalt not be indifferent.
Turski also spoke in 2020 at the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The speech was so powerful, a movement began to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize. At that time he reiterated a phrase his friend, Roman Kent, the president of the International Auschwitz Committee. Kent coined the Eleventh Commandment, which stems from the experience of the Shoah, the Holocaust, the terrible epoch of contempt. It runs thus: thou shalt not be indifferent. His words bear repeating and remembering.
“This is what I want to tell my daughter; what I want to tell my grandchildren. My daughter’s peers, my grandchildren’s peers, wherever they might live, in Poland, Israel, America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe. This is very important. Thou shalt not be indifferent in the face of lies about history. Thou shalt not be indifferent when the past is distorted for today’s political needs. Thou shalt not be indifferent when any minority faces discrimination. Majority rule is the essence of democracy, but democracy also means that minority rights must be protected. Thou shalt not be indifferent when any authority violates the existing social contract. Be faithful to this commandment. To the Eleventh Commandment: thou shalt not be indifferent.
Because if you are indifferent, you will not even notice it when upon your own heads, and upon the heads of your descendants, another Auschwitz falls from the sky.”
May your memory be a blessing, Mr. Turski.
Click here for the full text of his 2020 speech.
Click here for the website of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw Poland.
