Social and political activist, historian, teacher.
He was born in Kalwaria, Lithuania, in 1900, the son of Rabbi Jankiel (Jakub) and Sara-Lea, née Witenberg. He earned a master's degree in philosophy with a concentration in history from the Free Polish University, taught in municipal schools in Łódź, and was active in Jewish charities and the Zionist party Poale Zion-Right.
In 1939, the Gutkowski family—Elijah, his wife Luba, and their one-year-old son Gabriel—arrived as refugees in Warsaw. They lived in the ghetto at 7/9 Muranowska Street, apartment 5, and later at 31 Nowolipki Street. Gutkowski worked for the Jewish Social Self-Help, became one of Emanuel Ringelblum's closest associates, and became the second secretary of the Oneg Shabbat group after Hersh Wasser. He also continued to work for the underground press of the Poale Zion Right party and taught Jewish history at the underground Dror gymnasium.
He recorded accounts from refugees, displaced persons, and former labor camp prisoners, copied and filed manuscripts, and prepared (with Wasser) weekly news bulletins for the Jewish and Polish underground press. He gathered information on the pogroms perpetrated by the Germans in Lviv and the Lublin region. In early September, the Germans deported Gutkowski to the Treblinka extermination camp, but he managed to escape and returned to Warsaw. In November 1942, together with Ringelblum and Wasser, he wrote another report on the Grossaktion and the Treblinka extermination camp. He perished in 1943 with his family, likely during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
