JÓZEF WOLSKI (1920–2008), EXPERT IN PARTHIAN HISTORY, HISTORIAN OF ANTIQUITY
JOZEF WOLSKI (1920–2008), EXPERT IN PARTHIAN HISTORY, HISTORIAN OF ANTIQUITY

Summary/Abstract: Jozef Wolski, professor emeritus of the Jagiellonian University, the Nestor of Polish historians of antiquity, died in Krakow on October 2, 2008. Born in Tarnow (March 19, 1910), he was brought up and educated in Cracow.1 He studied at the Jagiellonian University from 1928 to 1932. He joined the ancient history seminar of Prof. Ludwik Piotrowicz, who employed him as his assistant and so highly valued his disciple’s master’s thesis that he decided to accept it as a doctoral dissertation (1936).2 Even before World War II broke out, Wolski succeeded in advancing his research for his habilitation, so much so that its first version was ready in 1939. In the autumn of that year he was to continue the research in Paris having been awarded a scholarship, but the subsequent turbulent time frustrated his and many of his Polish peers’ plans, as the German occupiers banned university education. On November 6, 1939,Wolski, together with his professor and a large number of other Jagiellonian University scholars, was arrested in what was called ‘Sonderaktion Krakau’ and imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen and later Dachau concentration camps.

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