Barbara Engelking (born 22 April 1962) is a Polish sociologist specializing in

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

studies. The founder and director of the

Polish Center for Holocaust Research The Polish Center for Holocaust Research ( pl, Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów) is an academic and research center at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland. The center's director is historian Barbara Engelking. History The Polish C ...

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

, she is the author or editor of several works on the

Holocaust in Poland The Holocaust in Poland was part of the European-wide Holocaust organized by Nazi Germany and took place in German-occupied Poland. During the genocide, three million Polish Jews were murdered, half of all Jews murdered during the Holocaust. ...

Education and career

Born in Warsaw, Engelking received an MA in psychology from the

University of Warsaw The University of Warsaw ( pl, Uniwersytet Warszawski, la, Universitas Varsoviensis) is a public university in Warsaw, Poland. Established in 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country offering 37 different fields o ...

in 1988 and a Ph. in sociology from the

Polish Academy of Sciences The Polish Academy of Sciences ( pl, Polska Akademia Nauk, PAN) is a Polish state-sponsored institution of higher learning. Headquartered in Warsaw, it is responsible for spearheading the development of science across the country by a society o ...

, also in Warsaw, for a thesis on ''The Experience of the Holocaust and its Consequences in Autobiographical Accounts'' (1993). Since 1993, Engelking has been an assistant then associate professor at the

, part of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the

. Since 2014, she has been chair of Poland's . From November 2015 until April 2016, she was the Ina Levine Invitational Scholar at the

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust hi ...

Mandel Center in Washington, D.C.

Works

Engelking's book '' The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City'' (2009), written with

Jacek Leociak Jacek Leociak (born 2 June 1957, in Warsaw) is a Polish literary scholar and historian as well as author. He is a professor of humanities and an employee of the Institute of Literary Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Polish Cent ...

, provides detailed maps of the

ghetto A ghetto, often called ''the'' ghetto, is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished t ...

so that readers can locate the streets and former community structures.

Michael Marrus Michael Robert Marrus (1941–2022) was a Canadian historian of the Holocaust, modern European and Jewish history and international humanitarian law. He is the author of eight books on the Holocaust and related subjects. Overview Marrus (1941–2 ...

described it as "a stunning work, one of the most important books on the history of the Nazi Holocaust". In a review of Engelking's book '' Such a Beautiful Sunny Day: Jews Seeking Refuge in the Polish Countryside, 1942–1945'' (2016), first published in Polish in 2012, Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe wrote that it challenged the German tendency to neglect non-German Holocaust perpetrators, as well as the Polish tendency to view Poles in

German-occupied Poland German-occupied Poland during World War II consisted of two major parts with different types of administration. The Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany following the invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War II—nearly a quarter of the ...

entirely as victims. In 2013 historian Samuel Kassow described Engelking's work and that of three other scholars ( Jan Grabowski, Alina Skibińska, and Dariusz Libionka) as a "historical achievement of the first order", undermining "the self-serving myths about Polish-Jewish relations in World War II". In 2018 Engelking and Grabowski co-edited '' Dalej jest noc: losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski (Night without End: The Fate of Jews in German-Occupied Poland)'', a two-volume, 1,600-page study of nine counties in German-occupied Poland during the Holocaust.Study says Polish neighbors betrayed many more Jews than previously thought
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 11 May 2018. In February 2021, a Warsaw court ruled that Grabowski and Engelking must apologize for their claims about Edward Malinowski (the ''

sołtys A sołtys () is a head of a sołectwo elected by its permanent citizens in a village meeting (''zebranie wiejskie''). According to data from 2010, Poland had 40 thousand sołtys, 30.7% of which were women. Role and powers Since 1990, a soł ...

'' of the Polish village of Malinowo) in ''Dalej jest noc''; in August, the ruling was overturned by an appeals court.

Selected works

*(2001). ''Holocaust and Memory: The Experience of the Holocaust and its Consequences''. London:

Leicester University Press , mottoeng = So that they may have life , established = , type = public research university , endowment = £20.0 million , budget = £326 million , chancellor = David Willetts , vice_chancellor = Nishan Canagarajah , head_label ...

(edited by Gunnar S. Paulsson). *(2009) with

. '' The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City''. New Haven:

Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous. , Yale Universi ...

. *(2009) with Dariusz Libionka. ''Żydzi w powstanńczej Warszawie''. Polish Center for Holocaust Research. *(2016). '' Such a Beautiful Sunny Day: Jews Seeking Refuge in the Polish Countryside, 1942–1945''. Jerusalem:

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...

. *(2018) with Jan Grabowski (eds.). '' Dalej jest noc. Losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski'' ight Continues: the Fates of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland 2 volumes. Warsaw: ''Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów'' enter for Research into the Extermination of the Jews

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Engelking, Barbara 1962 births Historians of the Holocaust in Poland Living people Polish women historians Polish sociologists Polish psychologists Polish women psychologists University of Warsaw alumni Polish women sociologists 20th-century Polish historians 21st-century Polish historians