Ewa Kurek

From 1971 to 1977, Ewa Kurek studied history at the Catholic University of Lublin, gaining a master's degree in 1979 and later a Ph.D. from the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin for her research on the rescue of Jews by Polish nuns.[1] She edited the underground NSZZ Solidarność FSC Information Bulletin in Lublin and collaborated with the underground Spotkania and with Polish and American scholars and press. She has been a lecturer at the Humanities-Economy Academy in Łódź and at the Higher School of Learning in Kielce.[2]

Her 1995 book Zaporczycy, 1943-1949 about the "cursed soldiers" led to a suit by family of one of the subjects, objecting to discussion of his alleged links with the communist security apparatus. Consequently the book's second edition dropped pertinent fragments.[1]

In 2016, Kurek circulated a petition calling for exhumation of the victims of the Jedwabne pogrom.[3]

In 2018, she received an award from a private U.S.-based Polish organization that was to have been presented to her at a Polish consulate in New York. Following media criticism, the presentation ceremony was cancelled.[4][5][6][7][8][9]

In March 2020 she claimed on an interview on Wrealu24 that the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in Europe was a weapon used to replace "our Western Christian culture" with Jewish culture, and that Western Europe was controlled by "Jewish conglomerates".[10]

Barbara Tepa Lupack, who reviewed the English version of her early work based on Kurek's dissertation thesis (Your Life Is Worth Mine: How Polish Nuns Saved Hundreds of Jewish Children in German-Occupied Poland, 1939-1945, 1997), commented that "Kurek's account of the Polish nuns' rescue efforts is [...] both compelling and historically significant" but "while Kurek's narrative is absorbing, her analysis of key issues is sometimes weak" as "she oversimplifies both the nuns' attitudes towards their Jewish charges and the Polish Jews' attitudes towards their own impending doom." She concludes that "Nevertheless, Your Life Is Worth Mine is an interesting volume [and] is a welcome addition to literature about the fate of children during the Holocaust."[11] Jan Karski wrote an introduction to the American edition which was subsequently reused in the enhanced edition of the book published in 2001.[12][13]

Kurek's 2001 work Dzieci żydowskie w klasztorach. Udział żeńskich zgromadzeń zakonnych w akcji ratowania dzieci żydowskich w Polsce w latach 1939–1945 ("Jewish Children in Convents. The Participation of Nuns’ Congregations in the Rescue Operation of Jewish Children in Poland Between 1939–1945") was described as a pioneering work by Joanna Michlic. However, Michlic describes Kurek's chapter on the postwar recovery of the children as a "rather biased perspective colored by anti-Jewish prejudices", saying Kurek's assumptions are questionable from historical and moral points of view. In the chapter, Kurek implies that Jewish children would have been "better off" had they been left in the hands of Polish convents and families, blaming Jewish organizations and individuals for traumatic changes in the children's lives, rather than the war and the genocidal destruction of Jewish families.[14]

In 2006, her habilitation dissertation titled Poza granicą solidarności: Stosunki polsko-żydowskie, 1939–1945 ("Beyond the Border of Solidarity: Polish-Jewish relations, 1939-1945") was rejected by John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. It had nonetheless been published as a book, and attracted some notoriety and criticism in media.[1] Her work was described by Michlic as presenting Jewish-Polish relations as a conflict between incompatible civilizations.[15] Kurek's interpretation of ghetto development in German-occupied Poland was described as "outlandish" by Laurence Weinbaum. Weinbaum criticized Kurek, saying she suggested that ghettos "were essentially autonomous Jewish provinces built in the years 1939-42 by Polish Jews with the approval of the German occupation authorities", and the Jews "for the first time in over 2,000 years built their own framework of Jewish sovereignty". Weinbaum was also troubled that Kurek claimed that the situation of ethnic Poles in the years 1939-42, outside the ghetto, was far worse than the situation of the Jews who were held in confinement in the ghettos.[16] Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, in his review of the work, praised Kurek for tackling controversial issues without worrying about stereotypes and political correctness, but noted that her work has a number of methodological issues, such as insufficient sourcing and attribution, that need revision.[17]

She has attracted criticism in media in 2018.[18] According to David Silberklang, editor-in-chief of Yad Vashem Studies, Kurek "is maybe the only legitimate Holocaust scholar to have become an alleged Holocaust revisionist or distorter during a later phase of her career", with David Irving being a possible precedent; however, Irving lacked Kurek's credentials.[19] According to the philosopher Berel Lang, Kurek is more subtle than Irving. She doesn't deny the genocide but argues rather that the Jews were complicit with the Nazis in organizing the wartime ghetto system.[9]

• Ewa Kurek (1992). The Role of Polish Nuns in the Rescue of Jews, 1939-1945, New York University Press, ISBN 9780814762295.
• Ewa Kurek (1997). Your Life is Worth Mine: How Polish Nuns Saved Hundreds of Jewish Children in German-occupied Poland, 1939-1945. Hippocrene Books. ISBN 978-0-7818-0409-7., Introduction by Jan Karski
• Ewa Kurek (2012). Polish-Jewish Relations, 1939-1945: Beyond the Limits of Solidarity. iUniverse. ISBN 978-1-4759-3832-6.

• Official website
• Ewa Kurek-Lesik in nauka-polska.pl database