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Jan Karski & Pola Nireńska Award
Endowed by Professor Jan Karski at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in 1992, the Jan Karski & Pola Nireńska Award awards $5,000 to authors of published works documenting Polish-Jewish relations and Jewish contributions to Polish culture. 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. He is recognized by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Among the Nations.
Award Winner for 2022
The Jan Karski and Pola Nireńska Award Committee, comprised of Jonathan Brent (Executive Director of The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research), Monika Krawczyk (director of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute), Ewa Geller, Tadeusz Epsztein and Andrzej Żbikowski, has awarded the prize for the year 2022 to Professor Anna Landau-Czajka.
Anna Landau-Czajka, sociologist and historian, is a professor at the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She deals with the history of Polish-Jewish relations, the history of women and the social history of the 20th century. She is the author of the books: W jednym stali domu. Koncepcje rozwiązania kwestii żydowskiej w publicystyce polskiej lat 1933–1939 (1998) [They lived in one house. Concepts for resolving the Jewish question in Polish journalism in the years 1933-1938 (1998)], Co Alicja odkrywa po własnej stronie lustra. Życie codzienne, społeczeństwo, władza w podręcznikach dla dzieci najmłodszych 1785–2000 (2002) [What Alicja discovers on her side of the mirror. Everyday life, society, power in textbooks for the youngest children 1785-2000 (2002)], Syn będzie Lech... Asymilacja Żydów w Polsce międzywojennej (2006) [The son will be Lech… Assimilation of Jews in interwar Poland (2006)], Polska to nie oni: Polska i Polacy w polskojęzycznej prasie żydowskiej II Rzeczypospolitej, Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, Warszawa 2015 [Poland is not them: Poland and Poles in the Polish-language Jewish press of the Second Polish Republic, Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw 2015] 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], Koty w społeczeństwie II Rzeczypospolitej, Wydawnictwo Neriton, Warszawa 2020 [Cats in society of the Second Polish Republic, Neriton Publishing House, Warsaw 2020].
In the years 2003-2006 she led educational activities as a professor at the Jerzy Giedroyc Higher Academy of Communication and Social Media in Warsaw, and throughout 2006-2011 as a professor and director of the Institute of Sociology of Warsaw University. During 2009-2010 she was a member of the Scientific Committee, and after in 2013-2014, chairman of the Program Committee of the E. Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw.
In 2009, she received the title of professor of humanities. From 2011 she was a researcher at the Department of Sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, throughout 2016-2019 she was the deputy dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences for science and development. Throughout 2018-2021, she was the manager of the project „Związani historią. Stosunki polsko-żydowskie na ziemiach polskich” [Bound by history. Polish-Jewish Relations in Polish Territories” at the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw.
The Jan Karski and Pola Nireńska Award was originally funded by Jan Karski, the military courier of the Polish Government-in-Exile, to honour his wife, the dancer Pola Nireńska, who was Jewish and the only one of her extensive family to survive World War II.
The award is now funded and administered by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York in collaboration with the Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw.
Karski Award laureates include 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 and Joanna Lisek.