Krystyna Kersten

[4] 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.

[1] Although her master's thesis, entitled "The Local Market of Wieluń in the 16th Century", focused on medieval Polish, she was hired by Tadeusz Manteuffel in 1954 to teach the history of contemporary Poland.

[4] She joined the Communist Party (PZPR) in 1956 with hopes of pluralism and greater political openness in the post-Stalin era.

In 1975, Kersten was one of 7 intellectuals who signed an open letter to Edward Gierek, secretary of the PZPR, faulting him for breaking promises made after the workers' strikes in December 1970.

[citation needed] She published the first detailed Polish analysis of the 1946 anti-Jewish Kielce pogrom in December 1981, shortly before the introduction of martial law in Poland.