2019 Aquila Polonica Prize Winner
Natalia Aleksiun was awarded the 2019 Aquila Polonica Prize for best English-language article published during the previous two years on any aspect of Polish studies. The award was given at the 2019 annual meeting of the Polish Studies Association (PSA), which was held on Saturday, November 23, 2019 in conjunction with the Association for Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies Convention in San Francisco.
The biennial Aquila Polonica Prize is administered by the PSA, which appoints an independent committee of judges. The prize was awarded to Aleksiun for her 2017 article “Intimate Violence: Jewish Testimonies on Victims and Perpetrators in Eastern Galicia” (Holocaust Studies, vol. 23, 2017). This article focuses on a close reading of Jewish court testimonies from the trials that took place in Poland in the immediate postwar period. Called to tesify about the actions of individuals indicted for their collaboration with the Germans during World War II, Jewish witnesses described inter-ethnic relations in Eastern Galicia before and during the German occupation.
These accounts offer us a window into the process of destruction of Jewish communities in the region from a perspective of individual families. They shed light on the scope of intimate violence perpetrated by former neighbors as well as the survivors’ struggle to grasp and understand it.
The award carries a $500 honorarium donated by Aquila Polonica Publishing.
Aleksiun is the Professor of Modern Jewish History at Touro College, Graduate School of Jewish Studies in New York. She received her first Ph.D. in history at the University of Warsaw in 2001, and her second Ph.D. in Jewish Studies at New York University in 2010.
L-R: Aquila Polonica president Terry Tegnazian and prizewinner Natalia Aleksiun
