Barbara Engelking (born 22 April 1962) is a Polish psychologist and sociologist specializing in

Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

studies. The founder and director of the

Polish Center for Holocaust Research The Polish Center for Holocaust Research () is an academic and research center at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland. The center's director is Barbara Engelking. History The Polish Center for Holocaust Research, created in 2003, is a ...

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

, she is the author or editor of several works on the

Holocaust in Poland The Holocaust saw the ghettoization, robbery, deportation and mass murder of Jews, alongside other groups under similar racial pretexts in occupied Poland by the Nazi Germany. Over three million Polish Jews were murdered, primarily at the ...

Education and career

Born in Warsaw, Engelking received an MA in psychology from the

University of Warsaw The University of Warsaw (, ) is a public university, public research university in Warsaw, Poland. Established on November 19, 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country, offering 37 different fields of study as well ...

in 1988 and a Ph.D. in sociology from the

Polish Academy of Sciences The Polish Academy of Sciences (, 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 distinguished scholars a ...

, also in Warsaw, for a thesis on ''The Experience of the Holocaust and its Consequences in Autobiographical Accounts'' (1993). Since 1993, Engelking has been an assistant then associate professor at the

, part of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the

. Since 2014, she has been chair of Poland's . From November 2015 until April 2016, she was the Ina Levine Invitational Scholar at the

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust, dedicated to the documentation, study, and interpretation of the Holocaust. Opened in 1993, the museum explores the Holocaust through p ...

Mandel Center in Washington, D.C.

Works

Engelking's book '' The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City'' (2009), written with

Jacek Leociak Jacek Leociak (born 2 June 1957, in Warsaw) is a Polish literary scholar and historian 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 and the Polish Ce ...

, provides detailed maps of the

ghetto A ghetto is a part of a city in which members of a minority group are concentrated, especially as a result of political, social, legal, religious, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished than other ...

so that readers can locate the streets and former community structures. Michael Marrus described it as "a stunning work, one of the most important books on the history of the Nazi Holocaust". In a review of Engelking's book '' Such a Beautiful Sunny Day: Jews Seeking Refuge in the Polish Countryside, 1942–1945'' (2016), first published in Polish in 2012, Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe wrote that it challenged the German tendency to neglect non-German Holocaust perpetrators, as well as the Polish tendency to view Poles in

German-occupied Poland German-occupied Poland can refer to: * General Government * Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany * Occupation of Poland (1939–1945) * Prussian Partition The Prussian Partition (), or Prussian Poland, is the former territories of the Polish� ...

entirely as victims. In 2013 historian Samuel Kassow described Engelking's work and that of three other scholars (

Jan Grabowski Jan Zbigniew Grabowski (born June 24, 1962) is a Polish-Canadian professor of history at the University of Ottawa, specializing in Jewish–Polish relations in German-occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust in Poland.

, Alina Skibińska, and

Dariusz Libionka Dariusz Marian Libionka (born 25 June 1963 in Bielsko-Biała) is a Polish historian affiliated with the Institute of National Remembrance in Lublin. Life Dariusz Libionka graduated from the Catholic University of Lublin (''KUL'') and the School f ...

) as a "historical achievement of the first order", undermining "the self-serving myths about Polish-Jewish relations in World War II". In 2018 Engelking and Grabowski co-edited '' Dalej jest noc: losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski (Night without End: The Fate of Jews in German-Occupied Poland)'', a two-volume, 1,600-page study of nine counties in German-occupied Poland during the Holocaust.Study says Polish neighbors betrayed many more Jews than previously thought

Jewish Telegraphic Agency The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) is an international news agency and wire service that primarily covers Judaism- and Jewish-related topics and news. Described as the "Associated Press of the Jewish media", JTA serves Jewish and non-Jewish news ...

, 11 May 2018. In February 2021, a Warsaw court ruled that Grabowski and Engelking must apologize for their claims about Edward Malinowski (the ''

sołtys A sołtys () is a head of a sołectwo elected by its permanent citizens in a village meeting (''zebranie wiejskie''). According to data from 2010, Poland had 40 thousand sołtys, 30.7% of which were women. Role and powers Since 1990, a soł ...

'' of the Polish village of Malinowo) in ''Dalej jest noc''; in August, the ruling was overturned by an appeals court.

Selected works

*(2001). ''Holocaust and Memory: The Experience of the Holocaust and its Consequences''. London:

Leicester University Press The University of Leicester ( ) is a public research university based in Leicester, England. The main campus is south of the city centre, adjacent to Victoria Park. The university's predecessor, University College, Leicester, gained university ...

(edited by Gunnar S. Paulsson). *(2009) with

. '' The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City''. New Haven:

Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day and Clarence Day, grandsons of Benjamin Day, and became a department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and ope ...

. *(2009) with Dariusz Libionka. ''Żydzi w powstanńczej Warszawie''. Polish Center for Holocaust Research. *(2016). '' Such a Beautiful Sunny Day: Jews Seeking Refuge in the Polish Countryside, 1942–1945''. Jerusalem:

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem (; ) is Israel's official memorial institution to the victims of Holocaust, the Holocaust known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (). It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; echoing the stories of the ...

. *(2018) with

(eds.). '' Dalej jest noc. Losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski'' ight Continues: the Fates of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland 2 volumes. Warsaw: ''Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów'' enter for Research into the Extermination of the Jews

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Engelking, Barbara 1962 births Historians of the Holocaust in Poland Living people Polish women historians Polish sociologists Polish women psychologists University of Warsaw alumni Polish women sociologists 20th-century Polish historians 21st-century Polish historians Polish psychologists