My mentor at the University of Colorado just passed away. I first met Ed when I entered the PhD grad program in political science fresh out of the army in 1973. As his obituary records here, he was a remarkable person and teacher. He will be missed.
Born in Poland in 1918, Mr. Rozek fled his homeland after Adolf
Hitler’s army swept through Europe. He escaped via Hungary, Yugoslavia
and Italy to France, where he joined the First Polish Armored Brigade,
which took part in the defense of Paris.As a young soldier, Mr. Rozek was captured by the Nazis, who held him and other POWs in a slave-labor camp.
“Rats used to run over him at night,” Elizabeth Rozek [his wife] said. “He used
to say that he didn’t like the accommodations, so he escaped.”Along with another prisoner, Mr. Rozek made his way to Budapest,
Hungary. After narrowly escaping from a German SS officer and
falsifying papers, he made his way to England. There, he became the
commander of a reconnaissance platoon in the First Polish Armored
Division.He fought from Normandy to northern Germany and was wounded three times, his wife said.
In 1949, Mr. Rozek left for America with $50 in his pocket and a suitcase filled with books.
“He decided that the only way to stop war . . . and to break this cycle is to teach,” his wife said.
Working his way on a dairy farm and at a gas station, Mr. Rozek
attended Harvard University, where he earned his doctorate in
philosophy. In 1956, he became a professor of comparative governments
at the University of Colorado.In 2003, then-U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo., read a tribute to Mr. Rozek into the Congressional Record.
“As the famous philosopher Sidney Hook said of Dr. Rozek in the dedication to his book Academic Freedom and Academic Anarchy,
Ed is truly an ’embattled fighter for free men, free society and a free
university against fascism, communism and totalitarian liberalism,’ ”
the entry states. “May God bless Dr. Edward Rozek and his epic legacy
of service to free people everywhere.”
