In 1928 Datner settled in
Białystok.[3] Before the outbreak of
World War II, he worked as a
physical-education teacher at a Jewish secondary school in Białystok. He lived in that city with his wife and two daughters through the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland. After the German attack on the
Soviet Union, he was forced with his family into the
Białystok Ghetto. On 24 May 1943 he helped smuggle several persons out of the Ghetto. However, his wife and daughters did not survive its liquidation.[citation needed]
Postwar career
After the war, Datner served for two years as head of the Białystok branch of the
Central Committee of Jews in Poland (CŻKH). "A survivor himself, he deposited his own testimony at the Jewish Historical Commission in Białystok on 28 September 1946."[4]
The same year, the CŻKH published his Walka i zagłada Białostockiego Ghetta (The Struggle and Destruction of the Białystok Ghetto).[3] In the late 1940s Datner moved to
Warsaw. He became a prominent specialist on World War II crimes and
the Holocaust.[4] Of
Jewish extraction, he was dismissed from his post during the
1968 Polish political crisis but was rehabilitated soon after.
His daughter is
Helena Datner [
pl], Polish historian and sociologist specialising in the social history of Polish Jews and the anti-semitism in Poland.
Walka i Zagłada białostockiego getta (
Łódź, 1946)
Zbrodnie Wehrmachtu na jeńcach wojennych w II wojnie światowej (
Warsaw, 1961)
Zbrodnie okupanta w czasie powstania warszawskiego w 1944 roku (w dokumentach) (Warsaw, 1962)
Wilhelm Koppe - nieukarany zbrodniarz hitlerowski (Warsaw-
Poznań, 1963)
Ucieczki z niewoli niemieckiej 1939-1945 (Warsaw, 1966)
Eksterminacja ludności żydowskiej w Okręgu Białostockim (Bulletin of the Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw, October–December 1966, no. 60: pp. 3–29)
Niemiecki okupacyjny aparat bezpieczeństwa w okręgu białostockim (1941–1944) w świetle materiałów niemieckich (opracowania Waldemara Macholla), Biuletyn GKBZH (Warsaw, 1965)
55 dni Wehrmachtu w Polsce (Warsaw, 1967)
Las sprawiedliwych. Karta z dziejów ratownictwa Żydow w okupowanej Polsce ( Warsaw, 1968)
Tragedia w Doessel - (ucieczki z niewoli niemieckiej 1939-1945 ciąg dalszy) (Warsaw, 1970)
Z mądrości Talmudu (Warsaw, 1988)
References
^Grabowski, Jan (2013). Hunt for the Jews: betrayal and murder in German-occupied Poland. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.
ISBN978-0-253-01087-2.
^
abPoczykowski, Radosław & Katarzyna Niziołek.
"Szymon Datner (1902-1989)". Szlak Dziedzictwa Żydowskiego w Białymstoku. Uniwersytet w Białymstoku. Retrieved 10 May 2011.
^Bernd Wegner (1997), From Peace to War: Germany, Soviet Russia, and the World, 1939-1941, Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, Berghahn Books,
Germany, p. 54