2016 Jan Karski & Pola Nirenska Award

The Jury of the Jan Karski and Pola Nirenska Award is pleased to announce that Prof. Ewa Geller of Warsaw, Poland was named the recipient of the Karski Award for the year 2016. This annual award was endowed by Prof. Jan Karski in 1992 for an author of published works documenting Polish-Jewish relations and Jewish contributions to Polish culture.

The winner was chosen by the Award Jury whose members are Prof. Pawel Spiewak (Director, Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw), Dr. Jonathan Brent (Executive Director, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research), Dr. Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov, Prof. Szymon Rudnicki, and Dr. Joachim S. Russek. The award ceremony will be held in October at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw.

Prof. Ewa Geller teaches at Warsaw University’s Department of Neophilology. Her PhD degree was earned in 1988 with her dissertation on Polish and East Slavic influences in Yiddish on the base of Y. B. Singer’s works. Her post-doctoral work was on Warsaw Yiddish, published as “Warschauer Jiddisch,” Tubingenin, 2002. In 2007 Ewa Geller was named Associate Professor at Warsaw University. Of her other works in the realm of Yiddish it is worth mentioning Geller’s interest in Ludwik Zamenhof’s manual of Yiddish grammar, and a 17th century health vademecum in Yiddish, which Ewa Geller found in Vienna and translated into Polish.