Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
View entire collection guide
Search this collection
Table of contents
Title: Edmund Jan Osmańczyk papers
Date (inclusive): 1937-1989
Collection Number: 2013C2
Contributing Institution: Hoover Institution Library and Archives
Language of Material:
Polish
Physical Description:
84 manuscript boxes, 1 oversize box
(34.0 Linear Feet)
Abstract: Correspondence, writings, and printed matter, relating to political conditions in Poland, Polish foreign relations, and international
relations in general.
Creator:
Osmańczyk, Edmund Jan, 1913-1989
Physical Location: Hoover Institution Library & Archives
The collection is open for research; materials must be requested in advance via our reservation system. If there are audiovisual
or digital media material in the collection, they must be reformatted before providing access.
For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Acquired by the Hoover Institution Library & Archives in 2012.
[Identification of item], Edmund Jan Osmańczyk papers, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Edmund Osmańczyk (1913-1989) was a Polish journalist, writer, politician, and Silesian activist. He served as parliamentary
deputy from 1952 to 1961 and 1969 to 1985. His life was rather atypical for his generation of Polish intellectuals; unlike
most others, who were either killed or had to leave the country, he survived the war and forty-five years of communism, and
died in free Poland.
Born on the extreme western periphery of ethnic Poland, in mostly German Silesia, Osmańczyk studied in Warsaw and in Berlin.
His journalistic career began in the 1930s as a correspondent covering the League of Nations in Geneva. Later he directed
the press of the Union of Poles in Germany, an organization concerned with the welfare of over a million ethnic Poles and
Polish immigrants living in pre-World War II Germany. Threatened with arrest by the Gestapo, Osmańczyk moved to Warsaw and
got a job with the Polish State Radio. When the Nazis invaded Poland in September 1939, he joined the underground, working
for its clandestine radio in Warsaw. He lived through the Warsaw Uprising, and, in early 1945, he joined the Polish troops
fighting alongside the Red Army. He was a war correspondent during the battle for Berlin, the Potsdam Conference, and the
Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals.
An enthusiastic and vocal supporter of Poland's rights to its formerly German "Recovered Territories," and uncritical of Polish
Communists and their Soviet sponsors, Osmańczyk worked for the Polish state radio and the press agency without having to join
the Communist Party. His radio and press assignments took him to various countries in Europe, the United States, and Latin
America. Along with a small group of Catholic and unaffiliated intellectuals, Osmańczyk served in the parliament of Polish
People's Republic for close to thirty years, through 1985, helping provide a semblance of democratic diversity to this largely
symbolic institution. In the waning years of communist Poland, during the social and political ascendancy of the Solidarity
trade union movement of the 1980s, Edmund Osmańczyk joined the democratic opposition. He was one of the Solidarity representatives
in the roundtable discussions with the Communists that paved the way for a peaceful transition from authoritarian communism
to a parliamentary democracy in Poland. In the first semifree parliamentary elections in the Soviet Bloc, on June 4 1989,
Osmańczyk was elected senator. He was able to enjoy his democratic mandate, political popularity, and respect only briefly,
dying of a heart attack four months later.
Osmańczyk authored some two dozen books and hundreds of articles. His most substantial work was the four-volume
Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements, with an introduction by Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, published in several editions in Polish, English, and
Spanish. Osmańczyk, an old acquaintance of Witold Sworakowski, director of the Hoover Institution Library and Archives was
probably the first scholar from communist Poland and the Soviet Bloc to conduct research at the Hoover Library and Archives.
After his October 1956 visit to Stanford, Osmanczyk published a detailed report on some of the Polish holdings of the Hoover
Library and Archives; it remains a useful tool for researchers.
Scope and Content of Collection
Correspondence, writings, and printed matter, relating to political conditions in Poland, Polish foreign relations, and international
relations in general.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Poland -- Politics and government -- 1980-1989
Poland -- Politics and government -- 1945-1980
Journalists
World politics -- 1945-1989
Poland -- Foreign relations -- 1945-1989
Journalism -- Poland