Teresa Torańska

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Teresa Torańska
Teresa Torańska, Warsaw, May 22, 2005
Born	January 1, 1944(1944-01-01) Wolkowysk
Occupation	Journalist
Nationality	Polish

Teresa Torańska (born January 1, 1944) is a Polish journalist. She is perhaps best known for her award winning book, Oni (English: Them: Stalin's Polish Puppets).

[edit] Biography

Teresa Torańska was born on January 1, 1944 in Wołkowysk, Belarus, which was then part of the occupied Second Polish Republic. She graduated from the Warsaw University's Department of Law. She worked as a journalist for the popular Polish weekly „Kultura” in the nineteen-seventies, and then throughout the following decade, for the leading Polish émigré literary journal Kultura paryska, banned in communist Poland and published in Paris, France. In the nineties Torańska hosted two television programs for Telewizja Polska (TVP): socio-political „Teraz Wy” (Now You) and historical „Powtórka z PRL-u” (Rehash from the PRL). Torańska wrote the screenplay for a documentary film Dworzec gdański (Gdańsk Main Station) directed by Maria Zmarz-Kozanowicz. The movie, which premiered in 2007, told a story of the Polish Jews forced to leave Poland after the political crisis of March 1968. At present she's a contributor to Poland's second-largest daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza conducting interviews with the leading Polish political figures.

Torańska is perhaps best known for her award winning book Them: Stalin's Polish Puppets (Oni), published in the United States by HarperCollins.

“

This book, which could not be published in Poland (except in samizdat), contains interviews conducted in 1981-1984 with five formerly prominent Polish Communists (Edward Ochab, Jakub Berman, Roman Werfel, Stefan Staszewski, and Julia Minc, wife of Hilary Minc) who had leading roles in the Stalinist system in Poland in the years 1944-1956. Their frank statements and recollections, under the sharp questioning of a talented journalist, are remarkably revealing both of their mentality as loyal Stalinists (still loyal, for the most part, despite all the subsequent events) and of the political issues and struggles of that time, including the dramatic events of 1956.
— John C. Campbell, Foreign Affairs, Fall 1987.[1]

”

[edit] Works

Widok z dolu (The View from Below) (reportage), publisher: Iskry; 1 edition (1980), 162 pages, language: Polish, ISBN 978-8320702361
Oni (Them: Stalin's Polish Puppets), HarperCollins Publishers (May 1988), 384 pages, translated by Agnieszka Kolakowska, ISBN 978-0060914936 (paperback, hardcover)
My (We), publisher: Oficyna Wydawnicza MOST; 1st edition (1994), 295 pages, language: Polish, ISBN 978-8385611233
Byli (Bygones), (reportage), publisher: Świat Książki, Warsaw 2006, 318 pages, language: Polish, ISBN 83-247-0246-6 (hardcover)
Są - Rozmowa o dobrych uczuciach (They are - Conversation about Good Feelings), Świat Książki, Warsaw 2007, 288 pages, language: Polish ISBN 978-83-247-0791-1 (hardcover)
Dworzec gdański (Gdańsk Main Station) documentary directed by Maria Zmarz-Kozanowicz, Poland, 2007
Jesteśmy (We are), Świat Książki – Bertelsmann Media, Warsaw 2008, ISBN 978-8324710270

[edit] Awards

In 2000 Teresa Torańska received the Ksawery Pruszyński Award of the Polish PEN Club for the book Them: Stalin's Polish Puppets.

Torańska was the first recipient of the annual Barbara Łopieńska Award for the best press interview, received in 2005 for her conversation with Wojciech Jaruzelski.