Louis-Christophe Zaleski-Zamenhof

The name Krzysztof Zaleski was adopted by a teenage survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto to escape Nazi capture, a false identity he carried throughout his life. Born in 1925 in Warsaw, he spent his professional career as a civil and marine engineer while maintaining a lifelong connection to the international auxiliary language developed by his grandfather, L. L. Zamenhof.

Early Life and Survival

Born into a Jewish family, he experienced the German occupation of Poland during World War II. His father, Adam Zamenhof, was executed by the Nazis. Alongside his mother, Wanda Frenkiel, he avoided the deportations that claimed the lives of his aunts, Lidia and Zofia Zamenhof, at the Treblinka death camp. During his time in hiding, he was sheltered with the assistance of the priest Marceli Godlewski. While working in a field, he revealed his family heritage to an Esperanto speaker, a moment of vulnerability that caused him significant fear of betrayal during the height of the war.

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Engineering Career

Following the war, he attended the Warsaw University of Technology and completed his doctorate in civil and marine engineering. He worked primarily in Poland before moving to France in the 1960s, where he resided for the remainder of his life. His structural designs included large-scale precast concrete projects, ranging from deep-sea oil rigs to sports facilities. He also served as the lead engineer for the Charles de Gaulle Memorial located in Colombey-les-Deux-Églises. Beyond his practical work, he held teaching positions at various academic institutions, lecturing on the technical theories of maritime and land construction.

Esperanto and Public Life

Though he avoided formal leadership roles within the Esperanto movement, he remained a prominent representative of his family's legacy. He served as a spokesperson for the Zamenhof Foundation of Białystok and, in 1999, presented the Tolerance Medal to Pope John Paul II. He was named an Honorary Member of the World Esperanto Association in 2001. His personal history and reflections on his grandfather's linguistic project were documented in the 2003 book La Zamenhof-strato, written in collaboration with Roman Dobrzyński. He died in 2019 in Antony, France.