Poland’s Minister of Culture and National Heritage Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz has dismissed Monika Krawczyk as Director of the Jewish Historical Institute (ZIH) and appointed Dr. Michał Trębacz as Acting Director.
An announcement on the Ministry’s web site March 19 said the move was taken for her lack of compliance with programs and after the ministry had “received signals about irregularities in the management of the institution and the concern of the scientific community about a significant reduction in the level of scientific activity” of the ZIH.
It said “The minister’s decision to dismiss the current director was supported by Jewish communities in Poland.”
Krawczyk, a lawyer who had formerly served as the CEO of the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland (FODZ) and who in 2019 served briefly as chair of the Union of Jewish Religious Communities, was appointed as ZIH director in 2020 by Piotr Gliński the then Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture in the rightwing government that was ousted in elections last October.
She replaced Pawel Spiewak, who had served as ZIH director from 2011 to 2020. He died one year ago, in March 2023.
Last month, the web site oko.press published a PDF of a multi-page letter addressed to Sienkiewicz from unnamed former and current ZIH employees that lists a range of allegations against Krawczyk, including bullying, intimidation, incompetence, and acting to the detriment of the institution. (The web site Jewish.pl also published the letter.)
In an announcement on its web site, ZIH described Trębacz as having extensive Jewish scholarly and museum experience.
Michał Trębacz, PhD, is a member of the European Association for Jewish Studies (EAJS) and the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). From 2017, he was the head of the Research Department at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. He supervised the content of the Global Education Outreach Program, the aim of which was to build academic infrastructure for the development of Jewish studies in Poland and around the world. He lectured on the twentieth-century history of Polish Jews at universities in Germany, Israel and the USA. He also collaborated with the Memorial de la Shoah in Paris. He participated in and conducted many research projects on the history of Jews in Poland. He is the author of over 40 articles. He published, among others, in “Zagłada Żydów. Studia i materiały”, “Jewish History Quarterly” and “Polityka”.
The ZIH (or JHI) is, as per its web site, the “longest-functioning Jewish scientific institution in Poland” and the major repository of Jewish archives, documentation, art, objects, and other material regarding Polish Jewry, including the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto – the Ringelblum Archive — collected by the clandestine Oneg Shabbat group and buried in milk cans before the destruction of the Ghetto.
It serves as a museum, educational center, and archive, as well as a research institute. Since 2009 it has been officially known as the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute.
Located at Tłomackie 3/5, it occupies one of the very few Jewish buildings that survived the destruction of World War II — the pre-war Main Judaic Library, designed by Edward Zacharias Eber and built in 1928-36 next to the Great Synagogue at Tłomackie Street.
See the Culture Ministry announcement
See the letter to Sienkiewicz, on the Jewish.pl web site
1 comment on “Poland: Monika Krawczyk Dismissed as Director of the Jewish Historical Institute; Michał Trębacz named Acting Director”
Always looking for information of my mother Sara Suya Feldberg from Zwolen Poland and my Father Noach Miedzinski from Kalish Poland and their large family that we never got to know????? Any information would be Treasured ………