The ‘Jan Karski and Pola Nireńska’ Award announced for 2021

We know the laureate of the ‘Jan Karski and Pola Nireńska’ Award for 2021!

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 2021 to Professor Jan Doktór.

Dr. Jan Doktór is a researcher at the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute and the editor-in-chief of the “Kwartalnik Historii Żydów” [Jewish History Quarterly]. He deals with Jewish spirituality, old Jewish prints and Christian missions among Polish Jews. He is the author of many publications and studies, including Początki chasydyzmu polskiego [The Beginnings of Polish Hassidism] (2004), Misjonarze i żydzi w czasach mesjańskiej zawieruchy 1648-1792 [Missionaries and Jews in The Times of the Messianic Turmoil 1648-1792] (2012) as well as Słowa Pańskie. Nauki Jakuba Franka z Brna i Offenbachu [The Words of the L-rd. Teachings of Jakub Frank From Brno and Offenbach] (2017), Bracia, obcy czy współobywatele. Debaty chrześcijańskie na temat judaizmu i jego wyznawców w Europie do początków XIX wieku [Brothers, Strangers or Fellow Citizens. Christian Debates on Judaism and Its Followers in Europe Up to the Beginning of the 19th Century] (2019). He’s a translator of religious and philosophical texts. In the 1980s he was involved in printing the underground press.

He was honoured with the badge Meritorious Activist of Culture (2000), and awarded with the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (2011).

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.

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Shelly Freeman
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