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  • Prof. Krystyna Radziszewska z UŁ odebrała Nagrodę Copernicus za badania nad Holokaustem

Prof. Krystyna Radziszewska z UŁ odebrała Nagrodę Copernicus za badania nad Holokaustem

Prof. dr hab. Krystyna Radziszewska from the Faculty of Philology of the University of Lodz and prof. dr Sascha Feuchert from the University of Giessen have been selected to receive the Nicolaus Copernicus Polish-German Research Award for their in-depth collaboration in the field of Holocaust studies. The award is presented by the Foundation for Polish Science (FNP, Fundacja na rzecz Nauki Polskiej) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation). The scientists were honoured during a gala at the Baths Palace in Warsaw's Royal Baths Park. Prof. Elżbieta Żądzińska, Rector of the University of Lodz took part in the ceremony.

Prof. Krystyna Radziszewska and prof. Sascha Feuchert with the Copernicus Award.
After the award ceremony the Rector of the University of Lodz, prof. Elżbieta Żądzińska, congratulated prof. Krystyna Radziszewska.

According to the jury, the research of prof. Radziszewska and prof. Feuchert into literary testimonies from the Jewish ghetto in Lodz/Litzmannstadt – the second largest ghetto in Poland under the Nazi occupation – has made a significant contribution to the reconstruction of day-to-day life and Jewish culture in the ghetto. The jury especially commended the five-volume edition of the so-called “Ghetto Chronicle” (Lodz University Press, 2009) produced in cooperation with other academics, as well as the “Encyclopaedia of the ghetto” (Lodz University Press, 2014). The jury was also impressed by the translation of the joint publications into three languages (German, Polish and English), as well as the popularisation work done by the two literary scholars which has a far-reaching impact on society at large.

This award is probably the best confirmation of the importance and effects of many years of research on the history of the Lodz ghetto in cooperation with prof. Sascha Feuchert. It is very important to me that I can conduct research on the extermination of Lodz Jews with a colleague from Germany, a representative of a nation for whom the Holocaust is one of the darkest spots in history. And the fact that we are successful in it, and that now it has been noticed and appreciated. The award is also, as probably for every researcher, the culmination of another stage in my scientific development, honouring the daily hard work, the result of which are numerous publications appreciated not only by the scientific community

 – says prof. Krystyna Radziszewska, winner of the Copernicus Award 2022. (Polish only)

Professor Elżbieta Żądzińska, Rector of the University of Lodz, also reacted to the news about winning the award by the researcher from Lodz: 

Dear Professor,
Congratulations on a great distinction, this year's Copernicus Award! This is great news for the University of Lodz. I wish you further scientific success – she wrote in a congratulatory letter.
 

– she wrote in a congratulatory letter. 

Prof. Krystyna Radziszewska and prof. Sascha Feuchert have been working together since the late 1990s. Over time, an extensive international network of researchers from various disciplines has developed around their collaboration. At their universities (in Lodz and in Giessen), research centres of international reputation in the field of Holocaust studies have been established.

The Copernicus Award has been awarded by the DFG and the FNP since 2006 in two-year cycles. It can be awarded to a pair of scientists from Poland and Germany cooperating with each other. The name of the award comes from the name of the great astronomer, and its goal is to promote research achievements resulting from close cooperation between Polish and German scientists. 

The amount of the award is EUR 200,000. It is awarded in equal shares by both organisations (FNP and DFG). Each of the winners receives half of the amount. Twenty percent of their part is allocated by name to the scientist, and the remaining amount is devoted for further research and scientific development – it goes to the home university's sub-account, and the awarded scientist is the holder of the funds.

What will prof. Radziszewska decide to use this part of the award for? Among other things, for the second edition of the monumental, five-volume "Ghetto Chronicle", which was published thirteen years ago. The first edition has long run out, and the set of five volumes on Allegro now costs over a thousand zlotys!

Just today I have talked about it with dr Ewa Wiatr from the Centre for Jewish Studies of the University of Lodz. Since the previous, first edition of the “Ghetto Chronicle” in 2009, our research has advanced a lot, we know a lot more, so it is possible to correct the mistakes that were found in the scientific material at that time and correct the footnotes. The same applies to the “Encyclopaedia of the ghetto” – an unusual project of Jewish encyclopedists, describing how the community of people confined to the ghetto functioned, created under duress, which, however, developed its own language, customs, institutions, but also, for example, corruption phenomena, a community in which the spiritual needs were pushed to the background by the living ones, allowing them to survive in these ghastly conditions. The first edition of the “Encyclopaedia of the ghetto” has long run out, I myself have one, last copy

– says prof. Radziszewska. 

Perhaps some of the funds from the award will be also allocated to a special edition of a collection of unique reportages and essays by Oskar Singer, confronting the attitudes of Jews from Western and Eastern Europe who were locked in the Lodz ghetto. The first edition of the texts by Singer, a Prague Jew who ended up in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto – somehow initiating the cooperation of scientists from the University of Lodz and Giessen – was published in 2002. Now, twenty years later, when three of five scientists working on them (archivist Julian Baranowski and two researchers from Germany) are dead, an in-memoriam edition dedicated to the deceased colleagues would appear. 

Our plans are very broad – the history of the Holocaust and the Lodz ghetto is still an inexhaustible amount of research material, millions of pages. The archive includes, for example, a collection of 22,000 postcards, not sent from the Lodz ghetto, retained by the censorship, addressed mainly to Jews from Western Europe. We plan to develop this extremely valuable material and publish it in a selection, with a scientific commentary. Together with colleagues from Giessen, we are also preparing a book-textbook about the Lodz ghetto. It is already at the final editing stage. It will be addressed to school students and students in Poland and Germany. The DFG Foundation, which finances German translations and editions of our books, supports our work to a huge extent

– emphasizes prof. Radziszewska. 

Prof. Krystyna Radziszewska – first studied German language and literature and then philosophy at the University of Lodz. Then she returned to the University of Lodz as a lecturer of German. She obtained her PhD degree at the University of Adam Mickiewicz in Poznań, and since 2012 she has been a professor at the Institute of German Philology, University of Lodz. In 2016, she was a guest lecturer at the University of Hannover. Prof. Radziszewska is a member of the Commission for the History of Germans in Poland and has received several distinctions from the city of Lodz. 

Prof. Sascha Feuchert – after training as a journalist, studied German, English and educational science at the University of Giessen. As part of his studies at the Institute for German Studies at the University of Giessen, he spent a semester abroad, in Lodz and Szczecin. Since 2008, Feuchert has been Director of the Holocaust Literature Unit at the University of Giessen, and since 2017 he has been a professor of Modern German Literature at the same university. In his research, he focuses on Holocaust literature. He is also involved in its didactics. He has received several awards for teaching and literary achievements, as well as distinctions from the University of Lodz.

Source: Foundation for Polish Science

Edit: Promotion Centre of the University of Lodz