2015 Karski & Nirenska Award Ceremony in Warsaw

Top to bottom: Szymon Rudnicki presenting the award to Prof. Malinowski; Teresa Smiechowska; Professor Mailnowski delivering his lecture. (Photos courtesy Jewish Historical Institute)

On October 15, 2015, the ceremony for the 2015 Jan Karski & Pola Nirenska Award took place at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. The award, endowed by Professor Jan Karski at YIVO in 1992, provides grants to authors of published works documenting Polish-Jewish relations and Jewish contributions to Polish culture. The winner each year is selected by an award committee chaired by YIVO Senior Research Scholar Marek Web.

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This year’s honoree, Professor Jerzy Malinowski, a distinguished art historian, delivered a lecture, “Jewish Identity in modern art in Poland.” Other participants in the ceremony were Szymon Rudnicki (a member of the Award Committee) and Teresa Smiechowska on behalf of the Jewish Historical Institute.

Jan Karski (1914 – 2000) was a Polish World War II resistance fighter who, with the help of members of the Jewish Labor Bund, was smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto in order to gather information about Nazi atrocities in Poland for a report to the Allies. He was smuggled out of Poland, and in 1942-1943, he passed on to both British and American authorities a first-hand account of the destruction of Polish Jewry at the hands of the Nazis.

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