2019 and 2020 Jan Karski & Pola Nireńska Award

(New York, NY) – The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is delighted to announce that Professor Daniel Grinberg and Dr hab. Joanna Lisek were named the recipients of the Jan Karski and Pola Nireńska Award for the year 2019 and 2020, respectively. The awards were presented at an online event hosted by the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw.

This annual award, administered by YIVO, was endowed by Jan Karski in 1992 to honor his wife, Pola Nireńska, a dancer, who was the only survivor of a Jewish family during the war. It is for an author of published works documenting Polish-Jewish relations and Jewish contributions to Polish culture. 

The members of the Award Jury that selected the winners are Paweł Śpiewak (director of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute), Jonathan Brent (Executive Director of The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research), Joachim S. Russek, Bella Szwarcman-Czarnota and Marcin Wodziński.

“YIVO is committed to the continuance of this Award into the long future in order to continue honoring the memory of Pola Nireńska and Jan Karski, and as a symbol of YIVO’s history and its commitment to Polish-Jewish understanding,” said Jonathan Brent.

Prof. Daniel Grinberg is a historian, former director of the Jewish Historical Institute (1990–1995), since 1991 a professor at the Faculty of History at the University of Białystok. Among his interests are modern anarchist movement and general history of the 19th century, history of ideas, historical sociology, history of social movements and emancipation of European Jews. He translated into Polish works such as The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt (with Mariola Szawiel).

Dr hab. Joanna Lisek is a literary scholar, translator, faculty member of the Tadeusz Taube Department of Jewish Studies at the University of Wrocław. Among her interests is Jewish poetry and participation of women in Yiddish culture. She belongs to the Board of the Polish Society for Yiddish Studies. Editor and co-editor of works such as Silent Souls? Women in Yiddish Culture and anthology of translations from Yiddish women’s poetry, Moja dzika koza (My Wild Goat).

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Shelly Freeman
Chief of Staff

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