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Father Stanislaw Musial has
received Karski Prize
FORUM, ZNAK - Foundation of Christian
Culture
24 May 2002
24.05.2002/MT
The YIVO Institute for Jewish
Research today announced that Father Stanislaw Musial,
Jesuit priest and essayist from Cracow, Poland, has
received the 2001 Jan Karski and Pola Nirenska Prize.
Endowed by Professor Jan Karski
at YIVO in 1992, the $5,000 prize goes to authors of
published works documenting Polish-Jewish relations
and Jewish contributions to Polish culture. The award
ceremony will be June 29, 2002 at the Jewish Historical
Institute in Warsaw, Poland.
Fr. Stanislaw Musial is a leading voice in the Polish-Jewish
dialogue of the last two decades. His many writings
against anti-Semitism and xenophobia in Polish society
in general, and within the Catholic Church in particular,
have made him a central figure in the ongoing - and
at times deeply divisive - discourse about the past
and the present of Polish-Jewish relations.
He first became involved in the Polish-Jewish dialogue
during a particularly intense dispute over the Carmelite
convent, which was built in 1984 adjoining the site
of the Auschwitz concentration camp. As the Secretary
of the Commission of the Polish Episcopate For Dialogue
with Judaism (Komisja Episkopatu Polski do Spraw Dialogu
z Judaizmem) from 1986 until 1995, Fr. Musial was instrumental
in negotiating an agreement with Jewish groups resulting
in the convent's relocation.
Similarly, during the dispute over the 300 crosses planted
near Auschwitz, Fr. Musial was a forceful voice in the
drive to prohibit the use of religious symbols at the
concentration camp. In his public pronouncements, mainly
in the articles and interviews, Musial calls on the
Catholic Church to rid itself of the scourge of anti-Semitism,
past and present. He raises painful questions about
the Church's silence during the Holocaust, and about
its lack of resolve to condemn present-day persistence
of anti-Jewish sentiments among its clergy.
"I believe," Fr. Musial wrote recently, "that
in our homeland one will have to wait much longer until
the time when an anti-Semitic deed or pronouncement
would make people rise. Despite everything that was
done on our soil by the Nazis there is still a lack
of the common perception that anti-Semitism is in its
nature and in every form deadly..."
Born in 1938 to a peasant family, he is best known to
Polish readers through his frequent articles in the
popular Polish Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny.
His essays on Polish-Jewish history also have been published
in other periodicals, including Midrash and Polin.
The 2001 award committee consisted of Prof. Jozef Gierowski,
Jagellonian University, Cracow; Prof. Czeslaw Milosz,
University of California at Berkeley; Prof. Jerzy Tomaszewski,
Warsaw University; Prof. Feliks Tych, Jewish Historical
Institute, Warsaw; and Marek Web, Senior Research Scholar,
representing the YIVO Institute ex-officio.
The late Professor Jan Karski,
who established the prize at YIVO, was the envoy of
the Polish government-in-exile during World War II who
brought to the West firsthand testimony about the conditions
in the Warsaw Ghetto and in German death camps. The
prize is also named in memory of Professor Karski's
late wife, choreographer Pola Nirenska.
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