Open Academic Seminar -Karolina Panz, Zakopane Highlanders and Jews before the War, during the Holocaust, and in the Immediate Postwar Period

03.02.2026 07:36:36

    Oopen Academic Seminar 

Karolina Panz
Zakopane Highlanders and Jews before the War, during the Holocaust, and in the Immediate Postwar Period

Wednesday, January 18, room 161 Staszic Palace (ul. Nowy Swiat St. 72)11.00 A.M.

 Online participation via Zoom is possible. Advance registration is required.

https://tiny.pl/qx_vrmx1h  

The history of relations between the Zakopane highlanders and the town’s Jewish residents has long been overshadowed by the existence of the Goralenvolk - the movement promoting the idea of a distinct “Goral nation” - and by the involvement of members of several of Zakopane’s most prominent highlander families. In my presentation, I will examine whether, and in what ways, the understanding of the shared history of Jews and highlanders in Zakopane changes when viewed from a perspective extending beyond the period of the Holocaust.

Karolina Panz is a sociologist, a member of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, and an assistant professor at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She lives in the Podhale region and has spent more than a decade researching the fate of local Jews during the Holocaust and in the postwar years, while actively engaging in efforts to restore their memory. She has received numerous awards for her social activism and for her courage in addressing difficult historical topics. In 2020, her dissertation on the Jews of Nowy Targ received the First Prize in the Majer Bałaban Competition for the best doctoral dissertation on Jews and Israel, as well as the First Prize in the Inka Brodzka-Wald Competition for the best doctoral dissertation in the humanities. At the end of 2025, it was published in book form (“I Would Like to Tell How a Town Was Destroyed…” The Destruction of the Jewish Community of Nowy Targ). She is a recipient of the Claims Conference Saul Kagan Fellowship in Advanced Shoah Studies (2024/2025). She currently leads the NCN-funded project “Faces of Smuggling on the Polish–Slovak Borderland, 1918–1949.”