2022 Jan Karski & Pola Nirenska Award

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is delighted to announce that Anna Landau-Czajka was named the recipient of the Jan Karski and Pola Nireńska Award for the year 2022.

This annual award is for an author of published works documenting Polish-Jewish relations and Jewish contributions to Polish culture. It is administered by YIVO in collaboration with The Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and was endowed in 1992 by Jan Karski, the courier of the Polish government-in-exile during World War II, to honor his wife, Pola Nireńska, a dancer, who was the only survivor of her Jewish family during the Holocaust.

The Jan Karski and Pola Nireńska Award Committee, comprising of Jonathan Brent (Executive Director of The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research), Monika Krawczyk (Director of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute), Professor Ewa Geller, Professor Tadeusz Epsztein and Professor Andrzej Żbikowski, unanimously chose Professor Anna Landau-Czajka as the laureate for the 2022 award.

“YIVO is committed to honoring the memory of Pola Nireńska and Jan Karski through this Award which symbolizes so much of YIVO’s history and its commitment to the better understanding of Polish-Jewish relations,” said Jonathan Brent CEO and Executive Director of YIVO.

This year’s award will be presented at a Gala held hosted by the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw on Thursday, December 8 at 12:00pm EST. The event can be watched live on their Facebook page at: facebook.com/jewishinstitute.

ABOUT THE LAUREATE

Anna Landau-Czajka, is a sociologist and historian and professor at the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Her areas of focus include the history of Polish-Jewish relations and the history of women and the social history of the 20th century.

She is the author of numerous publications, including: , Wydawnictwo Neriton/Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla PAN, Warszawa 2006 [“My son’s name shall be Lech”. Assimilation of the Jews in interwar Poland, Neriton Publishing House/ The Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw 2020]; Wielki ‘Mały Przegląd’. Społeczeństwo i życie codzienne w II Rzeczypospolitej w oczach korespondentów „Małego Przeglądu”, Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, Warszawa 2018 [The Great ‘Small Overview’. Society and everyday life in the Second Polish Republic in the eyes of correspondents of “Mały Przegląd”, Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw 2018].

Past Karski Award laureates have included: Eugenia Prokop-Janiec, Jerzy Ficowski, Michał Friedman, Marek Rostworowski, Henryk Grynberg, Ruta Sakowska, Jerzy Tomaszewski, Hanna Krall, Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka, priest Stanisław Musiał, Leszek Hońdo, Michał Jagiełło, Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, Jan Jagielski, Joachim S. Russek, Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, Szymon Rudnicki, Aleksander B. Skotnicki, Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov, Marcin Wodziński, Alina Skibińska and Barbara Engelking, Piotr Matywiecki, Jerzy Malinowski, Ewa Geller, Eleonora Bergman, Tadeusz Epsztein, Bella Szwarcman-Czarnota, Daniel Grinberg, Joanna Lisek, and Jan Doktór.

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YIVO

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is dedicated to the preservation and study of the history and culture of East European Jewry worldwide. For nearly a century, YIVO has pioneered new forms of Jewish scholarship, research, education, and cultural expression. Our public programs and exhibitions, as well as online and on-site courses, extend our outreach to a global community. The YIVO Archives contains 24 million unique items and YIVO’s Library has over 400,000 volumes—the single largest resource for the study of East European Jewish life in the world. yivo.org / yivo.org/the-whole-story