4 | NOVEMBER 25 • 2021

PURELY COMMENTARY

essay
I Declined the Pilecki Prize to Support
Brave Polish Historians Under Threat
I

n the past few weeks, I had
the rare opportunity to pub-
licly register my opposition
to the Polish government’s
efforts to revise and control
the narrative of the Holocaust.
It was a small
gesture that will
not change the
situation but may
offer some succor
to activists, aca-
demics and other
people in Poland
opposed to the
current government’s policies.
As is well known by now,
the populist and nationalist
Polish ruling party has not only
passed a law to punish those
who defame the good name of
Poles during World War II, but
also actively and energetically
introduced rescue as the main
aspect of Polish-Jewish relations
during the war to be recognized
and discussed in public.
Many Polish scholars have
continued to produce cut-
ting-edge work that engages
with the complexities of life
under the terrible German
occupation, yet they do so
under threat. In February 2021,
two leading Polish historians
were ordered by a court to
apologize for work they had
published. While many outside
of Poland were appalled by this
turn of events, there was little
we could do to advocate for
academic freedom and against
the distortion of the Holocaust.
Thus, when my book,
Survival on the Margins: Polish
Jewish Refugees in the Wartime
Soviet Union, won the Pilecki
Prize, I suddenly had a chance

to take a stand
on behalf of
my colleagues
in Poland. The
Pilecki Institute
is a research
institution ded-
icated to study-
ing 20th-centu-
ry totalitarian
regimes and
funded by the
government.
They are able
to offer gener-
ous subsidies for their research
projects, fellowships and prizes.
They have also supported the
government in undermin-
ing uncomfortable historical
research findings and promul-
gating the paradigm of Polish
non-Jews as rescuers of Polish
Jews.
On Oct. 30, the institute
wrote to offer me the prize and
ask me to keep quiet about it
until the official announcement
on Nov. 16. After serious delib-
eration with friends and family,
I declined the Pilecki Prize with
a letter explaining my decision
on Nov. 4. Eight days later,
when the institute put out a
press release regarding my deci-
sion, I allowed my letter to be
published in Polish the follow-
ing day. The institute responded
with an open letter of their
own. Here is my original letter,
explaining why I could not
accept the prize:

Dear Mr. Stefanek,
I want to thank you for hon-
oring my book with the Witold
Pilecki Book Award. After a
decade of research in archives

around the
world, it is truly
heartwarm-
ing to receive
recognition.
Equally, I hope
that the book
will indeed
bring attention
to the import-
ant story at
its core: the
experiences of
Polish Jewish
refugees who
survived the Second World War
in the Soviet interior. Finally,
the life of Witold Pilecki, after
whom the Institute and the
prize are named, is an inspira-
tion to us all. It is thus with a
heavy heart that I must decline
this honor.
The Pilecki Institute, while
very generous in supporting
some historical scholarship on
the Second World War, has also
been involved in suppressing
the work of historians who
strive to show the complex and
indeed tragic aspects of Poland’s
wartime past. War and occupa-
tion push humans and societies
to their limits. The situation
during World War II was hor-
rific for all Poles, albeit not in
equal measure. Some non-Jew-
ish Poles, as profiled on the
institute’s website, lost their lives
protecting their Jewish compa-
triots. Others, as we know from
the scholarship of Professors
Jan T. Gross, Jan Grabowski,
and Barbara Engelking among
others, profited in a variety of
ways from the murder of their
neighbors.
Across Europe, different

countries have slowly begun
to come to terms with the
Holocaust and its difficult lega-
cies. The Nazis did not achieve
their goals single-handedly.
Rather, they relied on extensive
local support in every country
that they occupied, as well as
collaboration from Axis and
even neutral states. Recognizing
and researching this entangled
past is part of moving for-
ward. After 1989, it appeared
that Poland was on this path.
Indeed, the quality, breadth and
depth of research coming from
Polish scholars of the Holocaust
continues to be breathtaking.
However, in recent years, the
government, with the support
of the Pilecki Institute, has
moved to curtail this crucial
research through the threat and
reality of legal action.
As an historian, I must stand
with my many brave friends
and colleagues in Poland and
the remarkable research they
are doing. Moreover, I believe
that continuing the difficult
work of confronting the com-
plicated and uncomfortable
facts of the Holocaust in Poland
will help the country to make
sense of its past and help schol-
ars around the world to learn
about the ongoing effects of
genocide.
Sincerely,
Eliyana Adler

Dr. Eliyana Adler studies and teaches

East European Jewish history. Her book,

Survival on the Margins: Polish Jewish

Refugees in the Wartime Soviet Union,

was published in 2020. She lives in

Maryland with her family and travels for

research.

Eliyana Adler