Mazel tov to Dr. Michał Trębacz, whom Poland’s Ministry of Culture has confirmed as Director of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute (ZIH) in Warsaw. Trębacz has been serving as acting director since the ministry dismissed his predecessor, Monika Krawczyk, one year ago.
After a competition for the post, Trębacz was appointed for a three-year term, from March 20, 2025 to March 19, 2028.
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.
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.