Czesław Madajczyk

Czesław Madajczyk (27 May 1921 – 15 February 2008) was a Polish historian. His studies on the German occupation of Europe after 1938, and in particular on the occupation of Poland and on World War II Polish culture, are considered particularly important by the European scholarly community.

Life Czesław Madajczyk was born on 27 May 1921 in Jarocin. In 1947 he received a law degree from the University of Wrocław. He was a member of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) in 1948, and then, when PPS was absorbed by the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR), he became a member of that party. From 1954 to 1958 he taught at the Higher School for Social Sciences at Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party and from 1954 to 1956 at Dzerzhinsky Political-Military Academy in Warsaw. In 1963 he attained the rank of professor.

Madajczyk was an employee of the Institute of History at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw from 1956, its professor from 1963 and its president from 1971 to 1983. German historian Professor Karl Schlögel from Viadrina European University called Madajczyk a great historian that described the horror of German rule in occupied Poland.

Polish historian Roman Wapiński, praising Madajczyk works on the occupation of Poland, and noting their positive international reception, at the same time criticized his works that dealt with the economic history of the Second Polish Republic, and stated that they had the inevitable communist bias. Hirschfeld noted that during the Cold War, Madajczyk was a vocal supporter of scholarly cooperation, breaching the Iron Curtain.

Books Czesław Madajczyk, Polityka III Rzeszy w okupowanej Polsce (Politics of Third Reich in Occupied Poland), Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warszawa 1970 Czesław Madajczyk, Kultura europejska a faszyzm (Fascism and European Culture), Warszawa 1979. German translation by Berthold Puchert of revised edition, "Die Okkupationspolitik Nazideutschlands in Polen 1939–1945", Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1987. Czeslaw Madajeczyk, System okupacyjne mocy osi. Próba analizy porównawczej, w: Studia Historiae Oeconomicae, Poznan 1980 Czesław Madajczyk, Faszyzm i okupacje 1938-1945. Wykonywanie okupacji przez państwa Osi w Europie (Fascism and 1938-1945 occupations. Maintaining Nazi Power in Europe), t. I-II. Warszawa 1983 Czesław Madajczyk, Dramat katyński Książka i Wiedza 1989