JERUSALEM (JTA) — Jan Grabowski of the University of Ottawa was awarded the 2014 Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research.
Grabowski, a professor in the Canadian university’s history department, won for his book “Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland,” the Holocaust museum and memorial said in a statement. The award was presented Monday at Yad Vashem.
The prize is awarded in memory of Holocaust survivor Abraham Meir Schwarzbaum and his family members who were murdered in the Holocaust.
The book, published by the Indiana University Press, documents the involvement of Poles in finding and killing Jews during the Holocaust. It draws on materials from Polish, Jewish and German sources, and focuses on accounts of the fates of individual Jews.
“When it was first published in Polish in 2011, Grabowski’s book was followed by a vigorous discussion in the mainstream Polish media, showing that his writing can effectively break through a purely academic canon and affect widespread social perceptions of this crucial chapter of Polish and Jewish history,” the judges wrote in their remarks.
There were two honorable mentions for the prize: “Conscripted Slaves,” by Robert Rozett, and “Gates of Tears,” by David Silberklang.
