Israel Gutman – born in Warsaw, he was a member of Ha-Szomer Ha-Cair, fighter of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and a prisoner of the Majdanek and Auschwitz camps. After the war, he became the most important Israeli researcher on the extermination of Warsaw Jews and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He was both a witness and historian of the Holocaust. For us, the founders of the journal "Holocaust Studies and Materials", Israel Gutman was one of the most important authorities, for many of us a Master and Friend. Associated with our journal from the beginning, until his death in 2013, he served on its Scientific Council. We wish to honor him in this humble way.

Prize winner

Karolina Panz for the article entitled. "Why they, who had suffered and endured so much, had to die. Jewish victims of armed violence in Podhale in 1945-1947, published in the 11th volume of the journal "Holocaust Studies and Materials" on pp. 30-89

Karolina Panz received this award for her reliable study of a very difficult issue, burdened with stereotypes, mystified, subjected to manipulation and misrepresentation, and constantly causing violent emotions and disputes. It is about the treatment of Jewish Holocaust survivors by members of the anti-communist underground. Although the subject has been written about many times before, Karolina Panz has, on the one hand, verified or supplemented the findings of her predecessors, and, on the other hand, managed to tell us something significantly new. Not only about the perpetrators of these crimes, but above all about their victims, usually treated purely instrumentally. Taking up this kind of subject matter in the era of the cult of the "elite soldiers" promoted by the authorities and in an exceptionally unfavorable political climate requires considerable courage. It also requires particular care to document the theses and comprehensively highlight the problem. We note with satisfaction that Karolina Panz has managed to live up to the high standards of historical craftsmanship.

On December 5, during a ceremonial meeting combined with the presentation of the latest issue of the yearbook "Holocaust. Studies and Materials" Karolina Panz received the first Israel Gutman Prize for the author of the best article on the subject of the Holocaust published in 2015.

In her laudation, Prof. Barbara Engelking stressed that "Karolina Panz focuses primarily on the victims. She explains it as follows: "what I found striking in the literature to date was the way in which Jewish victims of this violence were cited - anonymously and en masse. Their deaths were, and are, justified by the stereotype of the 'Jewocracy'." And what's worse, "the restoration of the fame and memory of the soldiers of the exiled (...) often comes at the expense of remembering their victims and the consequences of the evil done." It is hard to disagree with this. Also, everything points to the fact that this trend will intensify in the coming years."

The laureate said: "I don't have any experience in receiving awards, hence the great trepidation, but also great emotion. I have thought for a long time about what I should say to you today. Let me start with where the thought to create this text came from. Certainly this motivation was not the award, because there was no award yet. It was related to when we settled in Podhale. (...) I began to deal with the history of the Jews of Nowy Targ, saw traces of this community, about which no one could really say anything. (...) I decided to see what happened there, why there was such silence about this history. Maybe it's because I had previously dealt with Grójec. Once someone has started to deal with this subject, he can't stop. Above all, I was interested in finding traces of the lives and deaths of these people."