In the spotlight: Bronisław Geremek

Few people deserve more credit in arranging the peaceful revolution of 1989 than Geremek, and few Polish politicians are as respected throughout Europe as he is. Thus the government's campaign against the former Foreign Minister is likely to further tarnish its image in the eyes of the world.

A Holocaust survivor, raised by a Polish family, Geremek is a professor of history, specializing in medieval culture and society. He studied at Warsaw University and at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. He has taught at the Sorbonne, College de France and the Polish Academy of Sciences. He holds numerous honoris causa doctorates from different universities across the globe. He has also been awarded the French Legion of Honor and the German medal - the Great Cross of Merit with Star.

Geremek was a member of the communist party between 1950 and 1968, when he left following the Warsaw Pact's invasion of Czechoslovakia. At the beginning of the 1980s he was an advisor to the Solidarity movement and was arrested during the martial-law period. Following the 1989 breakthrough, as a result of the roundtable talks in which he took part, Geremek became one of the most respected politicians of the 1990s. He was the leader of the Democratic Union between 1990-1997. From 1997 to 2000 Geremek was the Minister of Foreign Affairs and it was during his tenure in the Ministry that Poland became a member of NATO. Following the Democratic Union's 1991 election victory, he nearly became Poland's Prime Minister, but failed to win a parliamentary majority.