Bronislaw Geremek (1932-2008)

No one knows what today’s world or the history of the past few decades would have been like without Bronisław Geremek. But we have reason to believe that the history of Poland – and thus of Central Europe, and therefore, too, of the world – would have been different, and worse than it is...Geremek was a politician, so he must have calculated the chances of obtaining desirable results in every conflict. But in all circumstances he never lost sight of the fundamental values that must be kept intact amid compromises and concessions. He never lied in order to outsmart the other side in negotiations. He insisted that in negotiations everything be overt, nothing secret. The value of truth can never be compromised for the sake of a good result. The Poland which he dreamed of was a free, democratic, open country, without lies, without hatred, without fanaticism.

- Leszek Kolakowski

There are many people who love freedom as much as the Polish people do, but no one loves freedom more. Geremek embodied this trait and acted on it through his fierce intelligence and diplomatic and political skills. He was both a thinker and a doer, someone who combined profound affection for the best traditions of his own country without disrespecting others. To Geremek, democracy was not a crusade but rather a system of government which—however imperfect—would prevail wherever it was given a fair chance to succeed. In his judgment, there was no cause for the advocates of democracy to run around with bullhorns lecturing the world, but neither should we be shy about expressing our convictions.

- Madeleine K. Albright

This was the Poland Bronislaw Geremek loved and fought for: a Poland of tolerance, a homeland for all its citizens, without chauvinism and anti-Semitism. He believed that everyone can change for the better; that the good of Polish democracy demands that we nurse the ability to forgive and to reconcile. He wanted a democratic Poland united in solidarity with a democratic and strong Europe. Now that he is gone, we see how much he accomplished for such a Poland and such a Europe. He belonged to the tribe of great Kosmo-Poles, such as Chopin and Paderewski, Adam Czartoryski and Czeslaw Milosz, and—toutes proportions gardées—John Paul II. When times were hard, or virtually hopeless, as they were under martial law in the 1980s, Bronek repeated after Conrad, "One must."

- Adam Michnik

Download tributes to Bronislaw Geremek from Madeleine Albright, Leszek Kolakowski, Alexandr Vondra, and Radek Sikorski.

Read Adam Michnik's obituary for Bronislaw Geremek in The Guardian or you can purchase the full article at The New York Review of Books.