We keep doing our job

07.02.2018 07:02:09

We are receiving expressions of your care and fears about the Centre’s future. What will happen with the Centre’s activity: scholarly, popularization, and publishing?
 

We are receiving expressions of your care and fears about the Centre’s future. What will happen with the Centre’s activity: scholarly, popularization, and publishing? 

Let us declare that we do not intend to restricts or limit our work regarding the extermination of the Jews during the German occupation of Poland, and the reflections on the Holocaust, its history and complexity, on Polish-Jewish relations and on the immediate consequences of the Holocaust.

This spring we shall publish a two-volume study Jewish Survival Strategies in the General Government, 1942(1945. A Study of Selected Counties. We continue the yearly Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały (albeit without full funding), we also carry on the Holocaust Testimonies series, and we are working on a new project “Holocaust Witnesses – Polish Society on Occupied Territories vis-à-vis the Holocaust, 19391945” (we have submitted a grant application for the third time already). The Centre teaches graduate and post-graduate students, it is the fourth year of our seminar for young Holocaust scholars; we organize workshops, open meetings, cooperate with other research centers and organizations that deal with research, dialogue and memory building. We do our best.

We have the support of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Below we publish the letter of Professor Andrzej Rychard, director of the Institute.

In a moving interview for internet portal Wiadomo.co, Seweryn Blumsztajn described the current political climate as a threat to free public debate says: “They could, for example, dissolve the crown jewel of Polish history, that is the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research.”

Whoever they might be – can they really do that? In the first place, I hope that nobody would try to do it.  Furthermore, the Centre was established by decision of the Institute's Director on 2 July 2003. It operates in the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and is headed by Professor Barbara Engelking And – according the existing regulations – only the director could dissolve it.

I can assure Seweryn Blumsztajn’s readers that as the director I do not have the slightest intention do dissolve the Centre (and I am sure that my successors would share my view).  On the contrary, I intend to support, develop and - if need be – protect the Centre.  We are proud of the Centre’s work, and we believe that the recent studies on the groundbreaking two-volume monograph on Jewish survival strategies in nine counties is one of two of the Institute’s research achievements in 2017.  The Centre’s work, the painstaking Holocaust research and findings of historical facts seem to be particularly necessary today.  That is why, apart from what I have written above, I believe that nobody - whoever they might be – would try to restrict the activity of our Centre

Prof. dr hab. Andrzej Rychard
Corresponding member  of the Polish Academy of Sciences
Director of the Institute of Sociology and Psychology of the Polish Academy of Sciences