Elzbieta Ettinger (1925–2005)

Elżbieta Ettinger was born to a Jewish family in Warsaw, Poland (some sources say Łódź). Her parents were Regina Stahl and Emmanuel Ettinger. Along with the rest of her family, she was confined to the Warsaw Ghetto after Nazi Germany's invasion in World War II. In 1942, she managed to escape the ghetto with her mother and, using forged identity papers, adopted the identity of Elżbieta Chodakowska. She then worked with the Polish Resistance and engaged in sabotage activities. In 1943, she married a partisan named Gierek; the couple separated after the war. She later had a relationship with Manfred Lachs, a university professor, with whom she had a daughter. In 1946, Elzbieta received a degree in English and German philology from Jagellonian University in Kraków and in 1949 a master's degree in English philology from Warsaw University. In 1966, she earned a PhD in English and American literature from Warsaw University. During these years, she worked as a journalist, translator, editor, researcher, and government employee. Rising anti-Semitism in Poland contributed to her decision to emigrate to the USA in 1967. She was a senior fellow at the Radcliffe (now Bunting) Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts until 1974. In 1975, she became a writing professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a post she held for nearly 20 years until her retirement. She also became a well-known novelist and biographer. She helped establish MIT's Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies and was named Thomas Meloy Professor of Rhetoric and Literature. She also taught at the Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill and at the Harvard Extension School. Prof. Ettinger chronicled her experiences during World War II in her first book, the novel Kindergarten, published in 1968. Her second novel, Quicksand, published in 1989, described her life in post-war Poland. In 1987, she published a biography called Rosa Luxemburg, A Life. In 1995, she published the controversial biography Hannah Arendt-Martin Heidegger.