Ewa Kurek (born 1951) is a Polish historian, screenwriter, filmmaker, and author of historical books. She is a researcher of Polish-Jewish relations.^[1][2][3]

Biography

In the years 1971-1977 she studied history at the Catholic University of Lublin, were in 1979 obtained a master's degree, and ten years later a doctorate in history. She was an editor and co-editor of the underground “NSZZ Solidarność FSC Information Bulletin in Lublin,” cooperated with the editors of the underground “Spotkania” and Polish and American scientific and press editorial offices. She has been a lecturer in the Humanities-Economy Academy in Łódź [pl] and Higher School of Skills in Kielce [pl].^[4]

Views

Armin Rosen writing in Tablet, an American-Jewish magazine, argues that according to Kurek, Jews lie about Polish conduct in WWII in order to smear Poland and hide their own duplicity. According to Rosen, Kurek writings imply that Poland's urbanized Jews were Nazi collaborators during the Holocaust.^[5] According to Rosen, Kurek works contain damning claims like that "Jews had fun in the ghettos" during the Nazi occupation of Poland.^[6]

In 2006, Kurek advanced an interpretation, described as "outlandish" by Laurence Weinbaum, of ghetto development in German-occupied Poland in a book she published on the Warsaw ghetto. According to Kurek 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". Kurek has also said that the situation of ethnic Poles, outside the ghetto, was far worse than the situation of the Jews who were held in confinement in the ghettos.^[7]

In 2016 she circulated a petition calling for the exhumation of the victims of the Jedwabne pogrom.^[2]

Reception and controversy

She has been accused of downplaying the suffering of Jews in World War II,^[8][9] anti-semitic views, and described as 'divisive'.^[10]

According to philosopher Berel Lang "Kurek is more subtle than [Holocaust denier] David Irving, She doesn’t deny the genocide but argues rather that the Jews were complicit with the Nazis in organizing the wartime ghetto system."^[11]

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.^[5]

Selected works

• 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 (6 August 2012). Polish-Jewish Relations 1939-1945: Beyond the Limits of Solidarity. iUniverse. ISBN 978-1-4759-3832-6.
• Ewa Kurek (1992) The Role of Polish Nuns in the Rescue of Jews 1939-1945 NYU Press. ISBN 9780814762295.

References

External links

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