He was born in 1900 into a Krak\u00f3w working-class family. Little is known about his life until the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1921, he took part in the Third Silesian Uprising, then worked in the railways, and in the late 1930s he joined the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n
During the German occupation, he was Chairman of the Democratic Party in the former Krak\u00f3w Province, and Editor-in-Chief of the “Polish Daily”, – an underground newspaper affiliated with the party. The paper was published from 1940 to 1945. In 1943, Arczy\u0144ski left his original party, being a supporter of its left wing, which was transformed into a new grouping – the Polish Democracy Party.<\/p>\n
Parallelly to his party and underground activities, he was active in saving the Jewish population.\u00a0 In 1942, he became a member of the presidium of the \u017begota Council to Aid Jews, serving as its treasurer. As part of his duties, he presented monthly reports to the Audit Committee on how funds were spent on Jews in hiding. He was also subordinate to the Legalization Desk, where the necessary documents for them were forged – kennkarts, marriage certificates, passes, work permits, etc. This group consisted of six people. The prints were prepared in a secret print shop located at 41 Nowy \u015awiat Street, where party materials were also produced. As a concealment, there was a kitchenware store in this room.<\/p>\n
In 1965, for his work in \u017begota, Arczy\u0144ski was awarded the title ‘Righteous Among the Nations’. During the communist period, he published a book about it (together with historian Wies\u0142aw Balcerak). It is worth recalling that this now somewhat forgotten study was based on Arczy\u0144ski’s rich wartime archive.<\/p>\n
After the war, the \u017begota treasurer did not play a significant role in political or social life, although for a short time he was an MP for the KRN and the Sejm. In the second half of the 1950s, he was expelled from the Democratic Party for attempting to open an internal opposition, called the “renewal group”.<\/p>\n
He died in Warsaw in 1979.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He had three aliases in the underground – “Janek”, “Marek” and “\u0141ukowski”. During the Second World War, Marek Arczy\u0144ski was among the founders of the \u017begota Council to Aid Jews,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":56617,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history"],"yoast_head":"\n