Thomas Urban

(born in 1954) – a German journalist and writer, former correspondent of the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper in Warsaw and Kiev. He graduated from post-graduate studies in the 1980s in Moscow, where he worked with Soviet dissidents, for which he was arrested by the KGB. He worked for a number of press agencies, including Associated Press (AP) in New York and Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) in Hamburg. He wrote over a dozen academic and journalistic books describing the history of Polish-German relations, including Niemcy w Polsce. Historia mniejszości w XX wieku (Opole, 1994), Od Krakowa po Gdańsk. Wędrówka przez dzieje polsko-niemieckie (Warsaw, 2002) and Utracone Ojczyzny. Wypędzenia Niemców i Polaków w XX wieku (Warsaw, 2007). He is known for his controversial views. In the case of the Jedwabne Massacre, he defended a thesis about the significant role of the German army, and in the case of expulsions of the German population from the so-called Reclaimed Territories, he supported the position of Erika Steinbach and the Federation of Expellees.