“On behalf of my nation, I thank you for all that Professor Shevah Weiss has done for the development of Polish-Israeli friendship, dialogue and cooperation. Joining together with all of you gathered at the funeral ceremony in Jerusalem, where in January 2017 I had the honour and pleasure of awarding him with the highest Polish decoration, the Order of the White Eagle, I pay tribute to him and honour his great merits,” wrote Polish President Andrzej Duda in a letter of condolence.
“A friend of Poland has passed away, but also quite simply a good and wise man who will be greatly missed”, wrote Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in reaction to the news of the death of Shevah Weiss, former chairman of the Israeli Knesset and former Israeli ambassador to Poland.
The director of the Jewish Theatre in Warsaw, Gołda Tencer, remembers Weiss as a good man who loved people who returned that love. She recalls that his life story, his escape with his parents from the Warsaw Ghetto, followed by months of hiding from the Nazis, first at the home of a Ukrainian woman friend and then at the home of Poles, had a huge impact on his later activities.
“He felt himself to be a Jew, an Israeli and a Pole, it was such a combination of three different experiences”, said former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski. His life was an attempt to find what was common in the fate of Poland, Jews in Poland and contemporary Israel. An exceptional figure”, he added.
Shevah Weiss was a professor of political science and the author of several dozen books on politics, sociology, as well as on World War II and books addressed to children and young people. He gave lectures at the University of Warsaw.
“With great sadness we have received the news that Prof. Shevah Weiss, an outstanding political scientist and lecturer at the University of Warsaw, has passed away. An outstanding figure in every respect. We have lost a colleague and a friend of our University and of Poland”, says the Rector, the Senate and the whole community of the University of Warsaw in the special statement.
Adrian Andrzejewski