2015                 PhD in Social Sciences, University of Warsaw (Poland)

2005-2008         MA in European Studies , University of Exeter (UK)

2002-2007         MA: Institute of Sociology, Jagiellonian University (Poland)

research project

Agency Through Justice: Holocaust Survivors and Post-War Trials in Poland 1944-1956

My new project examines Jewish Holocaust survivors working to reclaim their agency immediately after the WW II in Poland. To shed more light on this process it uses the lens of post-war trials. I argue that transitional justice brought upon Nazi war criminals and their local collaborators provides unique insight into the lives of survivors, their communities and Polish society.

I concentrate on witnesses, i.e. Holocaust survivors who testified during the post-war trials. The existing scholarship on the other hand most often focuses on the defendants and their crimes, or the legal process itself. My project also looks at the sources from post-war trials in a new way: as documents on lives of those testifying in courtrooms. It obtains a “view from within” to the community of survivors and uses an empathetic interpretation of sources. I follow the approach of grounded theory used in social sciences which means that my study remains open to new analytical categories emerging during the research.

This project is based on variety of primary sources created by institutions (courts and investigators) and private individuals.

Monograph:

2016     Dom, którego nie ma [Non-existent Home], Wydawnictwo   Czarne (forthcoming)

Articles:

2014     ‘Recently discovered documents regarding the history of the Kielce Pogrom: the Statements of Henryk Błaszczyk and Gerszon Lewkowicz from July 1946’ (in Polish) in: Kwartalnik Historii Żydów / Jewish History Quarterly, nr 2, 2014

2014     ‘”We Would Like the House not to Remain in the Hands of Strangers”. Restitution of Jewish private properties in the Polish Courts (Kalisz and Radom, 1945-1948)’ (in Polish) in: Klucze i kasa. O mieniu żydowskim w Polsce pod okupacją niemiecką i we wczesnych latach powojennych, 1939-1950, eds. Jan Grabowski, Dariusz Libionka, Polish Centre for Holocaust Research, Warsaw

2013     ‘Homecomers: Jews and non-Jews in Post-war Radom’ (in English) in: Kwartalnik Historii Żydów / Jewish History Quarterly, nr 2, 2013

2012     ‘Calling Fears’ (in Polish) in: Kultura Liberalna, nr 193, 2012

2011     ‘Snapshots from People’s Republic of Poland. The Image of Communist Past in the Contemporary Polish Cinema’ (in Polish) in: Kultura i Społeczeństwo, nr 4, 2010

2011     ‘The First Wave of Comic Narrations about the Polish Peoples’ Republic after 1989 and what comes next?’ (in Polish) in: Historia w kulturze współczesnej. Niekonwencjonalne podejścia do przeszłości, eds. Piotr Witek, Mariusz Mazur, Ewa Solska, UMCS, Lublin

2010     ‘Contemporary Popular Culture and the History of PRL: The Image of Communist Past in the Comic Books and Hip-hop Songs’(in Polish) in: Historyka. Studia Metodologiczne, nr 40, 2010

Reviews:

2016     Anna Cichopek-Gajraj, Beyond Violence. Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944-48, Cambridge University Press 2014(in English), in: Pol-Int (https://www.pol-int.org/en/publications/beyond-violence-jewish-survivors-poland-and-slovakia-1944#r3571)

2013     Christian Ingrao, The SS Dirlewanger Brigade: The History of the Black Hunters (in Polish), in: Historyka. Studia Metodologiczne, nr 42, 2012

2013     Jean-Yves Potel, The End of Innocence: Poland towards its Jewish Past (in Polish), in: Historyka. Studia Metodologiczne, nr 42, 2012

2011     Jacek Leociak, Rescuing. Accounts of Poles and Jews (in   Polish), in: Kultura i Społeczeństwo, nr 4, 2010