Mazel tov to the Polish athlete and activist Dariusz Popiela who has received the 2021 POLIN award presented by the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw! It was the seventh 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.”
Popiela, who competed in the Beijing Olympics in kayaking, is an activist in Sądecki Sztetl, a Jewish heritage education association in Nowy Sacz, and the driving force behind “People, Not Numbers,” a project that restores Jewish cemeteries and creates memorials in them that list the names of victims of the Holocaust. With the award he receives a financial prize of 20,000 PLN (€4,300).
(Just three days earlier, Popiela received the Andrzej Wajda Award from the Kyoto-Krakow Foundation for outstanding activity in the spirit of social solidarity.)
Popiela’s activities also include the search for matzevot that were removed from cemeteries during or after WW2 and were used for construction or even backyard ornaments. He works with local communities to reduce and recover them. These matzevot undergo restoration and are used to create commemorative lapidaria in the cemeteries. Click to watch a video about him and his work.
Honorable mention POLIN awards were presented to Urszula Antosz-Rekucka from Mszana Dolna, Urszula Rybicka from Wrocław and Inga Marczyńska, operating in Małopolska and Subcarpathia.
Watch a video of the awards ceremony, with recorded interviews and statements from all the nominees:
Announcing the award, the POLIN Award competition jury said it recognized Popiela (who is a nine-time Polish Champion and a multiple medalist in the World and European Championships in mountain kayaking):
for commemorating by name more than 5,000 victims of the Holocaust from Krościenko nad Dunajcem, Grybów, Czarny Dunajec and Nowy Targ, for his incredible energy to act and inspire others to undertake activities in the area of memory protection.
For many years, the laureate, as an activist of the Sądecki Shtetl, has been co-organizing anniversaries related to the tragedy of Jews and meetings to familiarize with Jewish culture in Nowy Sącz.
He is the author of the project “People, not numbers”, in which the cemeteries where restoration work was carried out commemorate the name and surname of the victims of the Holocaust. The activities of the “People, not numbers” project also include meetings with young people in schools, during which the history of the local community is presented; educational trips to the death camp and museum in Bełżec, where young people learn the tragic history of the former inhabitants of their town, and then schools and students [can become responsible for the care of monument-memorial sites].
The Awards jury chose six finalists from around 100 applications from all over Poland.
The Honorable Mention winners receive a financial prize of 10,000 PLN each:
Urszula Antosz-Rekucka – leader of dialogue, social guardian of monuments, founder and president of the Shtetl Mszana Dolna Foundation.
She has been caring for the memory of the former Jewish inhabitants of Mszana Dolna for many years, educating students with respect for other religions and cultures, and sometimes being the target of anti-Semitic insults. She says she “factored this into the cost” to fight for the memory of innocent victims who suffered far more than she did.
Urszula Rybicka – journalist, reviewer, educator and president of the Żydoteka Foundation.
She introduces Polish readers to Jewish culture, focusing mainly on literature. She publishes on social media, where her posts are followed by several thousand readers. Urszula Rybicka is also the author of the Jewish Wrocław project, which she is implementing as part of the Scholarship of the President of Wrocław. Later this year, its website about the Jewish identity of the capital of Lower Silesia will be launched.
Inga Marczyńska – artist-visual artist and educator, lives in Jasło, but her activity covers many other places in Małopolska and Subcarpathia.
She cares for memorial sites that are very often not totally abandoned, educates young people, and conducts classes on Jewish culture and tradition for children and young people. Thanks to her involvement, it was possible to restore the memory of the Korzennik and Rachela Pacher Hall. 79 years later, girls from Kołaczyce, murdered in 1942 during the liquidation of the Jewish community in Jasło and its vicinity, were buried in the Jewish cemetery in Tarnów.
Two other finalists, Marek Chmielewski from Orla and Józef Gucwa from Bobowa, will receive financial prizes of PLN 5,000.
Previous winners include:
2020 — Paweł Kulig, chair of the Guardians of Remembrance Association, which works to preserve the Jewish cultural and historic heritage of the city of Łódź.
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. (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
2016 — Jacek Koszczan, founder and chairman of ‘Sztetl Dukla – Association for the Preservation of the Heritage of Jews from the Dukla Region.’ 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. 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.
Read the announcement of the awards (in Polish)