Earlier this summer, B’nai B’rith International presented its 2025 Gratitude Award honoring Polish citizens who have shown commitment to preserving Jewish heritage in Poland and cultivating Jewish-Polish relations to Robert Kobylarczyk, Andrzej Koraszewski and Ireneusz Socha in the individual category, and Association of the Museum of Bialystok Jews in the institutional category.
The awards were presented June 29 at a ceremony at the White Stork synagogue in Wrocław. From this year onward, they will be granted in honor of Marian Turski, a Polish-Jewish journalist, historian, Holocaust survivor, and a member of the B’nai B’rith Poland lodge, who died in February at the age of 98.
Robert Kobylarczyk initiated a project to commemorate the Jewish cemetery in Tuszyn in 2020. With support from donors, including descendants, he successfully raised funds to sponsor a five-ton commemorative stone. Andrzej Koraszewski has worked for years to combat anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli stereotypes through his writing, website, and journalism. Ireneusz Socha has dedicated his life to restoring the memory of Dębica’s Jewish community by documenting family stories, organizing educational events and commemorations, creating a Jewish heritage trail, and leading the successful effort to save and restore the New Town Synagogue as a cultural center.
The Association of the Museum of Bialystok Jews created and runs the Museum of the Jews of Białystok, known as Miejsce — “The Place”. The museum aims to highlight the rich Jewish cultural heritage of Białystok and the surrounding region and strengthen Polish-Jewish relations. The association pursues its goals by organizing thematic events, holding exhibitions, initiating educational and research activities, running an internet portal, funding scholarships, and collecting and sharing photographs, documents and artifacts related to the life and activities of Polish Jews.
This was the third edition of the Gratitude Awards. Last year’s winners were Prof. Łukasz Tomasz Sroka in the Individual category and the Brama (Gate) Cukermana Foundation in the Institutional category. The winners in 2023 were Urszula Antosz-Rekucka (Shtetl Mszana Dolna) in the Individual category and Forum for Dialogue in the Institutional category.
Several awards are presented each year to Poles who care for and preserve Jewish heritage and memory; the longest-running is the Preserving Memory Award, established by Michael Traison in 1998. There are also the POLIN award and the Sendler award. (Recipients of the Gratitude Award have also received some of these.) But B’nai Brith International says its Gratitude Award represents “the first annual award established by the global Jewish community to honor Poles for their contribution to dialogue and preservation of Jewish heritage in Poland and Jewish-Polish relations.”
See full details about the winners
See our post about the 2024 awards