A former Fulbright Visiting Fellow at CREEES (2017) returns to discuss her forthcoming book on William J. Tonesk (1906-1992) whose papers are deposited at the Hoover Institution Archives. Following examination of his personal files and interviews with a family member and friends, Mazurkiewicz went on to twelve different archives to unveil his role in some of the pivotal moments in U.S.-Polish relations. Born to a Polish American immigrant family in Schenectady NY, Bill Tonesk went on to become Deputy Chief of Protocol in the Kennedy White House. His earlier career included service for the Office of Naval Intelligence, OSS, CIA, and in the State Department. Since 1940s, his name is found in the situation rooms in Cairo (where he worked with general Anders’ intelligence officers), in Moscow (where Averell Harriman negotiated the post-war government for Poland), in Warsaw (with Arhtur Bliss Lane opening the U.S. Embassy in Poland and collecting information from anti-Communist underground), in Washington  (with political exiles from Poland who organized clandestine contacts with remaining opposition in the Communist-dominated country), in Frankfurt (with Ursula Discher - a honey trap set up by the Communists to get to an American diplomat in Warsaw Irvin Scarbeck), and… in Bangkok (in charge of selling agricultural machinery to South Vietnam). His life story entails service for the U.S. government found mostly within the context of its anti-Communist operations intertwined with his personal narrative of passionate love, risks, glamour and secrecy.  A graduate of Columbia University, ABD, alumni of the Institute of International Education program to Czechoslovakia, Kosciuszko Foundation Fellow in Poland in the 1930s, William J. Tonesk serves as a narrator to U.S. involvement in East Central Europe and beyond. In fact, his biography may serve as a look behind the scenes of U.S. foreign policy making with ethnic assets at its disposal. 

Anna Mazurkiewicz,  historian (PhD 2006, habil. 2016), Deputy Dean for Research and International Cooperation at the Faculty of History, University of Gdańsk in Poland, and first Chair of the International Border Studies Center at the UG. She published four books on the American responses to elections of 1947 and 1989 in Poland and on the role of the political exiles from East Central Europe in American Cold War politics. The latter won the Willi Paul Adams Award, for the best book on American history published in a language other than English (Organization of American Historians, 2019). Editor of five volumes resulting from international cooperation/projects, including four in English (published in Germany and UK). Recipient of numerous research grants and awards by Polish and American institutions, among them Kościuszko Foundation Scholarships and Fulbright Senior Award at the Center for Russian East European and Eurasian Studies, Stanford University, USA. She teaches contemporary history with a special focus on the Cold War, American history and US foreign policy, and offers courses in migration and diaspora studies.  

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