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