[2] He wrote a magister thesis entitled Służba domowa w Warszawie w końcu w. XVIII oraz próby jej zrzeszenia się zawodowego ('Domestic servantry in Warsaw at the end of the 18th century and its attempts to establish a trade association').
[5] Berman's social contacts in Warsaw included many communist sympathizing members of the Polish intelligentsia; Janina and Władysław Broniewski, as well as Wanda Wasilewska, were among his associates.
In March 1941 he moved to Minsk, where he worked as an editor at Sztandar Wolności ('The Banner of Freedom'), a Polish-language bulletin published by the Communist Party of Byelorussia.
[6] Berman's doctoral dissertation, written under the direction of Krzywicki and entitled O strukturze miast polskich na podstawie spisu ludności w 1791 r. ('On the structure of Polish cities based on the population census of 1791'), was brought to Białystok by his friend and colleague Irena Sawicka, but burned in Minsk when a dormitory where Berman and other journalists were housed was bombed by the Germans.
[12] He declared that 3 million non-Jewish Poles had died, in order to equalize the numbers, to make them acceptable to Polish public opinion.
[12] According to Jan Grabowski, this policy of "equalizing" the respective numbers of Jewish and Polish victims has since been propagated in Poland and that is how the issue is presently taught to students in public schools.
[2] In Lublin, at the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN), Berman practically led the foreign affairs department; which was primarily concerned with securing international recognition for the new communist-led governing entity.
[16] From 1948, together with Bolesław Bierut, general secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR), a successor of the PPR, and economist Hilary Minc, Berman formed a triumvirate of Stalinist leaders of Poland.
[17] In late 1949, Stalin attempted to remove Berman from his position of power, accusing him of participation in an international anti-communist conspiracy and illicit foreign contacts, but the effort did not succeed.
[16] From 1949 to 1953, he was officially and personally involved in the fight for the dominant position of socialist realism in art and literature, but in the post-war years he also helped and cultivated contacts with many Polish artistic personalities and his influence was essential to the establishment and continuous existence of such Polish mainstream institutions as the Czytelnik publishing house or Cepelia chain of craft stores.
[24] In the spring of 1955, Berman authorized the creation of the Crooked Circle Club, a free discussion forum in Warsaw, which marked the gradual departure from Stalinism.
[1] Hundreds of former members of the Polish resistance movement in World War II were persecuted, especially from the Home Army and the National Armed Forces.
In 1954, he was attacked during a party plenum by Aleksander Zawadzki, who claimed that, as he originated from a bourgeois Jewish family, Berman lacked a proper understanding of the Polish workers' movement.
[25] Berman was relieved from the Central Committee of the PZPR in the fall of 1956 and in May 1957, in the aftermath of the Polish October, dismissed from the party altogether.
[27] He was considered responsible for the "Stalinist-era errors and distortions" by which they meant dogmatic and sectarian party attitudes and breaking the rule of law.
[28] For two years Bermam remained without steady employment and supported himself by accepting various assignments, such as translations of works by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
In September 1958, Berman was placed by the party in the state-run Książka i Wiedza ('Book and Knowledge') publishing house, where he worked until he was retired by the authorities in 1968.
[25][30] a.^ Speaking during a plenum of the PPR in October 1947, Berman strongly expressed his agreement with Gomułka's views: "It is our tremendous achievement, as communists, that we are able to create a national party, which has become deeply rooted in Polish society.
After the death of Bierut, Berman's adversaries produced highly negative written evaluations of him in printed media and he quickly became a scapegoat for all the misdeeds of the Stalinist period.