Marceli Handelsman
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Marceli Handelsman (1882-1945) was a Polish historian and university professor, one of the most notable Polish medievists of 20th century and a tutor of numerous Polish historians.
Marceli Handelsman was born July 8, 1882 in Warsaw, to a family of distant Jewish ancestry. After graduating from the law faculty of the Russian language Imperial Warsaw University he moved to Berlin, where he started his studies at the historical faculty of the Unter dem Linden University. However, in 1906 he was dismissed from the school because of his involvement in various socialist organizations. Afterwards Handelsman continued his studies at various European universities, including Paris, Zurich (where he received a doctorate in 1908), Rapperswil, Vienna and finally London.
During the Great War, in 1915 he returned to Warsaw and joined the Warsaw University as a professor of modern history. He was also appointed a member of the Polish Academy of Skills. One of the most prominent historians of the epoch, between 1918 and 1939 he was also the editor in chief of the Historical Review and the head of a Commission for the Atlas of History of Polish Lands (1920-1935). Simultaneously he was a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences in Paris and the London-based Royal Society. Initially a medievist, in the interbellum Handelsman devoted much of his studies to 19th century political history of Poland, including the works of Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski and the circle of Hotel Lambert.
After the outbreak of World War II Marceli Handelsman hid from the Germans because of his Jewish roots. Nevertheless, he took an active part in the underground education in Poland during World War II and served as a professor of the underground Warsaw University. After 1942, under a noms de guerre Maciej Romański and Maciej Targowski he collaborated with the Bureau of Information and Propaganda of the Headquarters of the Home Army. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, he was sent to Gross-Rosen concentration camp. Transferred to Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, he was murdered on March 20, 1945.
