Tragikomedia z siedmiuset przypisami
Tragicomedy with Seven Hundred Footnotes

Summary/Abstract: I have spent the last five years preparing and then writing a biography of Alek- sandr Weissberg-Cybulski, a figure who was once quite well-known, but only in circles interested in communism. Born in 1901 in Cracow and raised in Vienna, Weissberg attracted attention with a book about his imprisonment in the Soviet Union from 1937 to 1940, one of the most important testimonies on Stalinism published during the Cold War. In 1967, The Great Purge (for that was the Polish title of this book translated from German) was published by the Literary Institute in Paris. I read it when I was a student, and it was of great importance to me, not only informative. It was an indictment of the great purge by its victim, but also a record of inquiries into the causes and logic of this phenomenon. It remained in my memory and, already in exile in New York, gave rise to a friendship with Eva Zeisel, the author's first wife. An admired designer of functional ceramics, Zeisel also fell victim to the great purge and left her and Weissberg's documentation. Something had to be done about it.

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