Gray Ranks
Antoni Maczak was born in Lwów in 1928. During the Second World War he fought in the Gray Ranks paramilitary Boy Scout units of the Polish resistance against the Nazis, and in the ranks of Home Army. He took part in the Warsaw Uprising of August–October 1944. Captured by the Nazis, he remained a prisoner until Germany surrendered in 1945. He then studied at the University of Warsaw and in 1981 he achieved the rank of professor. From 1981 to 1987 he was director of the History Institute of the University of Warsaw. He is a Fellow of the Collegium Invisibile, a Corresponding Member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He has lectured at many academic centres across the world, including at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, University of Notre Dame, McGill University.