Warsaw. POLIN Award 2024 competition. Finalists. Announcement of winners. Ceremony

The aim of the competition is to promote attitudes and activities consistent with the museum's mission. The winners of the POLIN Award 2024 competition are social activists who cultivate the memory of the history of Polish Jews and contribute to shaping a common future, mutual understanding and respect.

“From among the submitted candidates, the competition jury nominates, rewards and distinguishes people or organizations that in recent years have demonstrated important, extraordinary actions, attitudes, works or speeches with a significant impact on social awareness of the history of Polish Jews and on building Polish-Jewish relations,” we read. on the POLIN Museum website.

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On October 28, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of the core exhibition, the POLIN Prize will be awarded for the tenth time. The finalists of the 10th anniversary edition of the POLIN Prize competition were:

Grażyna Barwinek – Chęcinian, doctor of earth sciences, vice-principal of the Primary School. Jana Kochanowskiego in Chęciny, methodological advisor at the Świętokrzyskie Teacher Training Center in Kielce, regionalist, guide, participant of the “Ambassadors of the POLIN Museum” program and member of the Dialogue Forum.

For over 20 years, she has been involved in restoring the memory of the Jewish community of Chęciny and the region. Through his professional and non-professional activities, he educates the local community about the multicultural past.

Irena French – a citizen of Cieszyn by birth, an art historian by education, but above all, a museologist who has been working at the Museum of Cieszyn Silesia in Cieszyn for over 20 years, and has been the director for three years. Her area of ​​interest is multi-national and multi-religious Cieszyn and Cieszyn Silesia, emphasizing the history of two communities that no longer exist in Cieszyn: Jews and Germans.

For several years she has been a social guardian of Jewish cemeteries in Cieszyn. Four years ago, she initiated a campaign to clean up the two oldest necropolises in Cieszyn. Since then, a small, informal group of volunteers meets regularly at the New Cemetery on Sunday afternoons (there were also several classes of high school students).

Beata Łuczak – Polish teacher with many years of experience; for twenty-three years she worked as the vice-principal of the Primary School. captain saw Stanisław Skarżyński in Warta; co-founder of the Association. Ireneusz Ślipek for Polish-Jewish dialogue in Warta; activist in the Forum for Dialogue network.

She is the initiator and co-author of the permanent exhibition entitled “A trip into the past” placed on the fence of the Jewish cemetery in Warta. He looks after the cemetery and ensures its decent condition.

She took many actions together with the association to commemorate places important for the history of Warka Jews, e.g. placing a commemorative stone in the place of the former synagogue and another dedicated to two Warka Jews murdered after the war, and renovating the plaques on the Memorial Wall in the Rzuchowski Forest. For its activities, the Association was honored with the “Protecting Memory” diploma.

Karolina Panz – doctor of sociology, member of the Center for Holocaust Research and the Forum for Dialogue network, volunteer of the “People not Numbers” project of the Popiel Family Center Foundation.

She settled in Podhale, specifically in Nowy Targ, in 2005 because of her love for the mountains. At that time, she was writing her master's thesis about the Masovian shtetl, and having encountered traces of the existence of Nowy Targ Jews and the simultaneous collective (un)memory of the modern city, depriving them of their names, surnames and specific fates, she decided to deal with their history. And so, for almost twenty years, she has combined the role of a researcher of the fate of the Jews of Podhale with activities aimed at restoring their memory. He searches for materials regarding their history in all possible domestic and foreign archives, meets with survivors and descendants of Jewish Podhale inhabitants – on this basis, he recreates and describes the past. In his studies, he also addresses the most difficult issues, such as post-war anti-Jewish violence and its victims.

Dariusz Sobczyk – for years he has been restoring the memory of the Jews of Opatów. He began his activity in the 1990s. He is the memory guardian of Opatów, who initiated anniversary celebrations to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. For years, he has been trying, almost single-handedly, in difficult conditions, to make the town's inhabitants remember the tradition of their city. On the 80th anniversary of the extermination of Opatów, he co-organized a congress of the compatriots' association of descendants of Opatów Jews.

He was the originator and initiator of the first exhibition of Majer Kirszenblat's paintings in Opatów, organized together with the Association of Geodetic and Cartographic Initiatives “Geocentrum”, which took place at the headquarters of the District Office in Opatów. Together with the Society of Friends of the Opatow Region, he also organized a visit to Opatów of Israeli conservatory students and their teachers creating the big band “Stars of Galil & Gilboband”, a concert and a meeting with students of local schools

Ewa Teleżyńska-Sawicka and Paweł Sawicki – The “Memory of Treblinka” Foundation considers its mission to be restoring the memory of 900,000 people. Jews murdered in Treblinka. Okay. 80 percent of them were Polish citizens. Few people in Poland know that Treblinka is the largest war cemetery of Polish citizens, the largest war cemetery in Warsaw and two, or maybe even three hundred, Polish cities.

Most of the murdered will remain anonymous forever, but the Foundation wants to restore the memory of as many of them as possible by creating a database of Treblinka victims. It collects not only basic information – name, surname and dates, but also details about their lives and their photos. And what is very important, people are united into families, so that people brutally separated in their last moments are together at least in the base.

Ewa Wroczyńska – in the years 1977-2007 she worked at the Tykocin Museum, Branch of the Podlasie Museum in Białystok (in the years 1990-2007 as a manager). In the 1990s, she studied Hebrew at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. In 2007 she retired.

For many years, a special field of professional activity was the study and dissemination of Jewish religion, culture and tradition. She is the author of cyclical events titled: “Jewish Holidays”, organized at the Museum in Tykocin four times a year (Sukkot, Hanukkah, Purim and Pesach), which present Jewish topics through participation in holiday celebrations in the Tykocin synagogue. She devoted a lot of time to the animation of culture in Tykocin itself, combining this passion with professional work, collaborating with the Tykocin Amateur Theater. She was the author of most of the performances and included theater in popularizing museum content, including those related to the history of Tykocin and Jewish tradition.

– For the tenth time, the finalists of the competition included people who protect the memory of the Polish-Jewish history of cities and towns, tirelessly build bridges, dig, search and spread awareness. Their attitudes allow us to hope for a better tomorrow, and their actions to preserve the heritage of Polish Jews and resist indifference and oblivion bring results – says Radosław Wójcik, manager of the POLIN Prize 2024 competition, quoted in the release.

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– The winners of the 10th edition of the POLIN Award competition will be announced on the 10th anniversary of the opening of the permanent exhibition “1000 Years of the History of Polish Jews”. In this way, we would like to emphasize that, just like the main exhibition – the heart of our museum – they carry out the mission of restoring memory locally and every day. They contribute to saving the tangible and intangible heritage of Polish Jews – emphasizes Zygmunt Stępiński, director of the POLIN Museum, quoted in the release.

All competition finalists will receive financial prizes provided by the donors of the POLIN Museum – Tomek Ulatowski and the Odette and Nimrod S. Ariava Foundation – as well as Wiktor Askanas and Ewa Masny-Askanas.

The patron of the POLIN Prize 2024 competition is the Jankilevitsch Foundation, co-organizer – the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute in Poland.

The POLIN Prize has been awarded since 2015. So far, it has been awarded to nine winners, and over 55 people made it to the finals of the competition.