Samuel Sandler, Professor Emeritus of Polish Literature in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the College, passed away August 2, 2020. He was 94.

The following tribute to Professor Sandler was written by Bozena Shallcross (Professor, Slavic Languages and Literatures) and Bill Nickell (Associate Professor and Chair, Slavic Languages and Literatures).

Professor Samuel Sandler was an eminent historian of Polish literature, an editor and a pedagogue. He was born on January 25, 1926 in Łódź, Poland and died in his sleep on August 2, 2020 in Washington, D.C.  He was a Holocaust survivor, imprisoned as a youth in Litzmannstadt, one of the toughest wartime ghettos. After studying sociology at the University of Łódź, he received his Ph.D. in Polish philology in 1951 from the University of Wrocław. From 1951 through 1969 he held a series of positions, including senior research associate at the Institute for Literary Research at the Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, where he was Head of the Section on Modern Polish Literature, and then later, Head of Department for Research on Polish Literature of the Realist and Naturalist Period. Between 1964-1969 he directed the M.A. Seminar in Modern Polish Literature at the University of Łódź. His promotion to full professor was stopped by Władysław Gomułka, the 1st Secretary of the Central Committee of PZPR, whom Sandler criticized. Professor Sandler began publishing strikingly early in his career (1951) and by 1959 had published five books and many articles, focusing on Henryk Sienkiewicz, Bronisław Białobłocki, Adam Mickiewicz, Aleksander Świętochowski, and Andrzej Strug, among others. Between 1952-1969, Sandler co-edited three hundred volumes of the treasures of Polish and foreign literature, as well as literary criticism in the Polish book series Biblioteka Narodowa (National Library). As an eminent specialist of 19th century Polish literature, he  authored numerous books, especially about Bolesław Prus and Henryk Sienkiewicz. 

In 1969, he, his wife Bella and daughter Hanna left the Polish People’s Republic in the aftermath of the anti-Semitic purges initiated by the Communist government; during the same year he took a position as Associate Professor of Polish literature at Tel Aviv University; the following year he accepted a similar position at University of Illinois, Chicago. He joined the University of Chicago Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures in 1972, solidifying the Department’s offerings in Polish until his retirement in 1995. He began his tenure at Chicago by proposing a course on Stanisław I. Witkiewicz, Witold Gombrowicz and Sławomir Mrożek, examining their work in light of the tradition of the theater of the absurd. During his tenure at the University of Chicago he published on Joseph Conrad, Cyprian Kamil Norwid, and Świętochowski, among others, and anchored the program in Polish literature, teaching a broad range of courses on Polish literature from the Romantic period to the contemporary era, and mentoring doctoral students. Given the importance of Polish culture in the city of Chicago, this was of vital importance to the department and the community. When he retired, the department chair lamented to the Dean of Humanities, “It will not be easy to replace Sandler.” Indeed, Professor Sandler was a model hard to follow. Active to the end of his life, he published in his 2006 his last major book project: a representative selection of Prus’ journalistic writings otherwise known as Chronicles. In 2019, he donated his impressive book collection to the University of Chicago Regenstein Library. 

Samuel Sandler will be remembered as a warm, witty person of incomparable erudition and modesty. He will be sorely missed by his students, colleagues, and friends around the world.