Poland: Mazel tov to Paweł Kulig, winner of the 2020 POLIN award — and to the runners up. Kulig cares for the vast Jewish cemetery and other Jewish heritage in Łódź

Mazel to to Paweł Kulig who has received the 2020 POLIN Award presented by the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw! It was the sixth edition of the award. 

The Awards, which include a sculpture as well as financial prize, are granted to “individuals, organizations and institutions which are actively engaged in the preservation of the memory of the history of Polish Jews.” The awardees are judged to “have undertaken an important, unconventional action which could potentially bear a lasting effect on the social awareness of the history of Polish Jews as well as on building Polish-Jewish relations.”

Kulig is chair of the Guardians of Remembrance Association, which works to preserve the Jewish cultural and historic heritage of the city of Łódź.  For the past eight years he has looked after the city’s vast Jewish cemetery.  With the award he receives a financial prize of 20,000 PLN.

Honourable mentions were presented to Justyna Biernat from Tomaszów Mazowiecki and the Krotochwile Association from the Wielkopolska Region.

Announcing the award, the POLIN Award competition jury said it recognized

Paweł Kulig’s courage which was required to take upon himself a challenge of looking after the largest Jewish necropolis in Poland—boasting the area of over 40 ha—as well as his talent to build a circle of allies and associates around his projects and activities. Thanks to [his] endeavours, in 2020 the action of tidying up the cemetery was granted an honorary patronage of Mayor of the City of Łódź Hanna Zdanowska.

To formalize his activities and to extend their scope, Paweł Kulig established the Guardians of Memory Association which pursues its goals by organizing voluntary and charity actions, as well as meetings, workshops, lectures, exhibitions, concerts and educational walks.

Paweł Kulig has also been helping the descendants of Jews from Łódź in discovering their family stories and the fate of their near and dear ones. He helped many find the graves of their relatives among those he’s looking after. Paweł remains in close contact with the Landsmanschaft of Jews from Łódź in Israel.

The Honorable Mention winners receive a financial prize of 10,000 PLN each:

Justyna Biernat is the founder of the Arcades of Memory Foundation and has been involved in the preservation of the memory of Jews from Tomaszów Mazowiecki in the fields of both culture and academia for many years now.

She runs educational-artistic projects, organizes tours in the area of the former Tomaszów ghetto, writes scholarly texts and remains in close touch with the descendants of Jews from Tomaszów. She also published texts devoted to the Jewish history of Tomaszów Mazowiecki on the bilingual webpage of her Foundation. 

The Krotochwile Association “has been inspired by the multicultural past of the region it hails from, and it operates in many different places.”

Paweł Bajerlein and Patryk Antoniak, together with a group of associates and volunteers, have been actively engaged in the preservation of the local Jewish heritage in Wielkopolska [Greater Poland] — in Poznań, in Koźmin Wielkopolski, in Krotoszyn, Jarocin, Buk and many other localities across the region. The Association popularises the knowledge on Jewish history and culture by running educational projects addressed to both the youth and adults. In 2020, they launched and completed stage one of works on the inventory of the Jewish cemetery in Koźmin Wielkopolski. 

The sixth edition of POLIN Award had three more finalists: Agnieszka Mysakowska from Wieluń, Karol Głębocki from Wysokie Mazowieckie and Mirosław Reczko from Ciechanowiec. Each receives a financial prize of 5,000 PLN.

Read the full awards announcement and see details about all the finalists

The awards were presented at an online event, due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Watch the video:

 

Previous award-winners include:

2019 — Natalia Bartczak, who has cared for the Jewish cemetery in Wińsko, in western Poland, for 16 years — starting when she was just 13, won first prize. A Special Award went to the Auschwitz Jewish Center, the educational and religious center in the town of Oświęcim, the town where the Nazis built the Auschwitz death camp, which in 2020 marks its 20th anniversary.

2018 — Tomasz Wisniewski, based in Białystok, who has been working for more than 30 years to preserve the memory of the Jewish communities of Poland’s eastern borderland. He has written several books, including a guidebook to Jewish Bialystok and surroundings, and on his YouTube channel  you can find more than 2,000 films presenting Jewish history of the region. He has documented Jewish cemeteries and runs the site bagnowka.pl , which collects data on almost 40,000  tombstones, mainly Jewish ones, and also present other heritage information. (There were also several special awards.)

2017 — Joanna Podolska, Director of the Marek Edelman Dialogue Center in Łódź who is deeply engaged in preservation of the memory of the Jewish community of Łódź, was laureate of the POLIN Award 3rd edition. Dariusz Paczkowski from Żywiec and Ireneusz Socha from Dębica were granted Honorable Mentions. The 2017 POLIN Special Award went to the Children of the Holocaust Association in Poland.

2016 — Jacek Koszczan, founder and chairman of ‘Sztetl Dukla – Association for the Preservation of the Heritage of Jews from the Dukla Region.’ The Award jury decided to honour two more people. Honourable Mentions were presented to Robert Augustyniak, a prime-mover behind actions aimed at restoring the memory of the Jewish community from Grodzisk Mazowiecki, and Mirosław Skrzypczyk, teacher and animator of culture who is active in the field of preservation of the Jewish heritage in Lelów and Szczekociny. The Special Prize went to Jan Jagielski of the Jewish Historical Institute, to honour him for his lifetime achievement. 

2015 — Tomasz Pietrasiewicz, founder and director of the “Brama Grodzka—Teatr NN” foundation in Lublin was POLIN Award’s first ever laureate. His foundation has been involved in a number of educational and artistic projects dedicated to the heritage of Lublin Jewry since 1998. 

 

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The Jankilevitsch Foundation is the patron of 2020 POLIN Award. Financial prizes in this year’s edition were funded by: Tomek Ulatowski, POLIN Museum Distinguished Benefactor, Wiktor Askanas and Ewa Masny-Askanas, Odette and Nimrod S. Ariav Foundation and an anonymous donor. The Association of the Jewish Historical Institute is a co-organizer of the 2020 POLIN Award competition. The project is realised within the Jewish Cultural Heritage program financed by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway as part of the EEA Grants and by the state budget.