Krystyna Kersten

Krystyna Kersten (pen name, Jan Bujnowski; born Krystyna Goławska May 25, 1931 in Poznań – July 10, 2008 in Warsaw) was a Polish historian, a professor at the Historical Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of Collegium Invisibile. Described as "the first lady of Polish historiography", her essays on topics including Communism, Jews in Poland, and post-war Poland, have been collected in a number of volumes.

Kersten was born in 1931 to a family of Polish intelligentsia. Her father, Edmund Goławski, was the regional public prosecutor at the district court in Gniezno. He was taken prisoner by the Soviets in 1939 and murdered in Katyn in the spring of 1944, sparking his daughter's resistance to cooperation with the ruling authorities.

She graduated from the faculty of history of the University of Warsaw and taught there for several decades. Her book, ( The Birth of the System of Power in Poland, 1943–1948), was written in response to a proposal from the Polish publishing house Libella and published by Krag in 1985. It was published by Libella internationally in 1986 and won the Solidarity Cultural Prize; an underground best-seller, it was reprinted again in 1987 and 1988.

Her main field of study was the history of Poland after 1944, and especially the first period of communist rule following World War II. She published numerous works, some of them via the Polish underground press. She married Adam Kersten, also a noted historian. In 1999 she became seriously ill and largely stepped out of public life. She died on 10 July 2008 and was buried in the Northern Cemetery in Warsaw with her husband.

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