By NICHOLAS KULISH

GDANSK, Poland - A bubbly and witty presence, the tall, older gentleman with the cane does not instantly come across as an Auschwitz survivor, or a fighter in the Warsaw Uprising, or a imprisoned dissident under Communism.
In fact, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski is all those and more. Yet he is also the type of man who, on a busy day, stops to chat with the hotel maids and is sure to make them laugh before he goes on his way.
The world is unlikely to produce many more Wladyslaw Bartoszew skis, and that is probably a good thing, given the events he lived through and witnessed from an early age. But while his life may have been forged through immense suffering, it never managed to define his outlook.
“The optimists and the pessimists live identically long, but the optimists are considerably happier,” he said with an amused shrug, when asked about his famous good humor.
Mr. Bartoszewski, 86, bears a heavy history with a light touch. It is a gift that has allowed him, at an age when most of his generation has long since retired or died, to be a successful diplomat for Poland, as well as a source of moral authority.
He has twice served as his country’s foreign minister and is working again as an adviser to Prime Minister Donald Tusk. His special responsibility is for two of Poland’s most complicated relationships, with Germany and Israel.
Mr. Bartoszewski describes himself as just a normal man. Many Poles would disagree, speaking of him as a living national treasure. Yet he remains personable and approachable - if not the father of his nation, its wise but funny grandfather.
“I’m on the side of the people in the middle rather than the extremists,” he said. “Mankind has suffered enormously due to the ideologically motivated extremists, in Europe and all over the world.”
He was, unfortunately, in a good position to make that observation. Born in Warsaw in 1922, he was just 17 when he participated in the unsuccessful defense of his hometown as the Nazis conquered Poland in 1939. A year later, he was among many young Catholic Poles rounded up and sent to Auschwitz .
After his release in 1941, he joined the resistance and helped found the Zegota, or Council for Aid to Jews, which gave money, hiding places and false identity papers to Polish Jews trying to flee the Holocaust. Such assistance was punishable by death under the Nazis.
After the war, Poland fell into the Soviet sphere. Mr. Bartoszewski was again thrown behind bars for working to liberate his country and save his Jewish fellow citizens.
“By the time I was 32, I had sat for eight years in prisons and camps,” he said.
After he was freed in 1954 he became a journalist in Krakow and later a professor at the Catholic University of Lublin. He once again found himself part of an underground movement, a teaching network called the Flying University operating outside the official education system.
When Poland’s last Communist leader, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, declared martial law in December 1981 as part of an effort to suppress the Solidarity movement, Mr. Bartoszewski was imprisoned once more .
By the time of the elections in 1989, which were seen as a victory for Solidarity, he was 67 . But he was just getting started on his career as a diplomat, first as the ambassador to Austria and later as the foreign minister under two Polish governments .
Mr. Bartoszewski shows no sign of slowing down. He said his many projects give him motivation to keep working as long as he can. “What more could you really ask for-” he said, before heading out to meet with the Polish ambassador to Germany, and later with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.