Jacek Leociak (born 2 June 1957, in

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 ...

) is a

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...

literary scholar Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. T ...

and

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...

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 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 of ...

and 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 ...

Education and career

Leociak received a Ph.D. in 1996 at the Institute of Literary Research of the

with a dissertation on the

Warsaw ghetto The Warsaw Ghetto (german: Warschauer Ghetto, officially , "Jewish Residential District in Warsaw"; pl, getto warszawskie) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the G ...

. He was awarded the title of Professor at the Academy in 2013. Since 1997, Leociak was head of the research team on Holocaust literature at the Institute of Literary Research. He also joined the

at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 2008, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the

Order of Polonia Restituta The Order of Polonia Restituta ( pl, Order Odrodzenia Polski, en, Order of Restored Poland) is a Polish state decoration, state Order (decoration), order established 4 February 1921. It is conferred on both military and civilians as well as on al ...

for "his important contributions to exploring, collecting, and popularizing the information on the Holocaust as well as his activism for remembering the history of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising". In 2015, he was awarded the

Decoration of Honor Meritorious for Polish Culture The Decoration of Honor Meritorious for Polish Culture ( pl, Odznaka Honorowa "Zasłużony dla Kultury Polskiej") or Meritorious for Polish Culture, is a Polish departmental decoration in Arts awarded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heri ...

. In January 2019, he became the recipient of the

Kazimierz Wyka Kazimierz Wyka (19 March 1910 – 19 January 1975) was a Polish literary historian, literary critic, and professor at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków following World War II. He was a deputy to the Polish parliament (Sejm) from 1952 to 1956 ...

Award for his outstanding contributions to artistic and literary criticism. In May 2019, he received a nomination for Poland's top literary prize, the

Nike Award The Nike Literary Award ( pl, Nagroda Literacka „Nike") is a literary prize awarded each year for the best book of a single living author writing in Polish and published the previous year. It is widely considered the most important award for ...

, for his work ''Młyny boże. Zapiski o kościele i Zagładzie'' (Mills of God. Notes on the Church and the Holocaust).

Research focus

Leociak deals with the analysis of various forms of recording and of representation of the Holocaust experience. His research interests also include the narratives of victims, perpetrators and witnesses as well as the history of the Warsaw ghetto. Together with

Barbara Engelking Barbara Engelking (born 22 April 1962) is a Polish sociologist specializing in Holocaust studies. The founder and director of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research in Warsaw, she is the author or editor of several works on the Holocaust in P ...

, he published the book '' The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City'', which first appeared in Polish in 2001. It focuses on the

Warsaw Ghetto The Warsaw Ghetto (german: Warschauer Ghetto, officially , "Jewish Residential District in Warsaw"; pl, getto warszawskie) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the G ...

and its almost four-year history. According to a review in '' Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies'', the work is "a unique and detailed monograph that gives the reader an insight into the daily life of Jewish inhabitants of the closed district". At 800-pages, the book details "the institutional structure of the ghetto, its relations with the German Nazi government, important social institutions, and the economic and community life of the ghetto population," amounting almost to an encyclopedia. A review by the

Jewish Book Council The Jewish Book Council (Hebrew: ), founded in 1944, is an organization encouraging and contributing to Jewish literature.Michael N. Dobkowski
"The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City. Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak"

Jewish Book Council The Jewish Book Council (Hebrew: ), founded in 1944, is an organization encouraging and contributing to Jewish literature.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

) *''Ratowanie. Opowieści Polaków i Żydów'' (The Rescuing. The Stories of Poles and Jews), Kraków, 2010 *''Biografie ulic, Dom Spotkań z Historią'', Warsaw, 2018 *''Młyny boże. Zapiski o Kościele i Zagładzie'' (Mills of God. Notes on the Church and the Holocaust), Wydawnictwo Czarne, Wołowiec, 2018, * ''Wieczne strapienie. O kłamstwie, historii i Kościele'' (Eternal distress. About lies, history and the Church), Wydawnictwo Czarne, Wołowiec, 2020,

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Leociak, Jacek Living people 1957 births Writers from Warsaw Historians of the Holocaust in Poland 20th-century Polish historians Polish male non-fiction writers Polish literary critics University of Warsaw alumni Members of the Polish Academy of Sciences Recipients of the Order of Polonia Restituta

Education and career

Research focus

See also

References