Arnold Broniatowski

Aron ("Arek") Broniatowski was born on February 9, 1906 in Czestochowa, Poland. His father, Chaskiel Broniatowski, was a soapmaker. After having attended high school in Czestochowa, he studied technical chemistry at the German superior technical school (Deutsche Polytechnikum Berlin Charlottenburg Filiale) in Brno, Czechoslovakia. At this school, he obtained an engineer-chemist's diploma (Dr. Ingenieur) on June 29, 1929. From October 1929 to the end of 1931, he worked at the Przeworsk candy factory in Poland. In January 1932, he started working at the Czestochowa paper mill where he worked first as a shop foreman, then section manager, and laboratory manager, until the outbreak of hostilities in September, 1939.

In December 1939, Aron became a refugee in Russian-occupied eastern Poland. In January 1940, he was employed by the Russian authorities as a department head in the state paper factory in Mokurin near Rowno. He worked in this factory until June 22, 1941. On July 23, he was mobilized in the Red Army. He was injured in the Battle of Western Ukraine. At the end of July 1941, he was assigned to the largest paper and cellulose mill in the Soviet Union -- the "Kombinat" of paper and cellulose in Balachna, on the Volga. This assignment was made based upon the quality of his hands, which marked him as an intellectual rather than a laborer. In this factory, he exercised the following functions: engineer in charged of the technical control of the "Kombinat" from August 1941 until the middle of the year 1942, adjunct to the section head of technical control until May 1943, chief chemist (head of the Kombinat laboratories) until April, 1946.

In April 1946 Aron was decommissioned and repatriated to Poland thanks to the Russo-Polish Repatriation Accord, where he legally changed his name to Antoni Arnold Broniatowski. In Poland, Arnold worked briefly at the State Directorate of Paper Mills. While in Czestochowa, he returned to his father's house until the Chief of Police told him that his safety could not be guaranteed due to the climate of anti-Semitism pervading Poland at the time. In September 1946, he traveled to Switzerland to visit his sister, who was married to the redaktor of the Novelle Gazette de Zurich, Dr. H. Peter. At this time, Arnold spoke Polish, German, Russian, and Czech, and was conversant in English. Although he hoped to obtain a position at a paper manufactory at Attisholz, Solothurn, he did not get the job -- some say, because his experiences in Russia led him to be suspected as a "Red" Communist. He ultimately left for Sweden to work in Stockholm's National Paper Institute and the Karolinska Institute, where he invented a form of fire-resistant paper. He was naturalized as a Swedish citizen in 1954, and lived there until his death. He and his wife, Anna, co-founded the Anna and Arnold Broniatowski research fund at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.