Prof. Antony Polonsky (NEJS), the University's Albert Abramson professor of Holocaust Studies, was awarded the annual Kulczycki Book Prize at the national convention of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies for his three-volume monograph, The Jews in Poland and Russia, according to a Nov. 18 BrandeisNOW article.

The Kulczycki Book Prize is administered annually by the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies "for the best book in any discipline, on any aspect of Polish affairs," according to its website.

According to the ASEES website, the conference took place Nov. 17 to 20 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C.

In an interview with the Justice, Polonsky said the association consists of approximately 3,000 members.

The monograph for which Polonsky received his award is in the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization which is in the United Kingdom.

It chronicles the history of the Jewish people in Poland and Russia.

The description on the Littman Library's website states "The history of the Jewish communities of these lands—where most of the Jews of Europe and America originated—is often the subject of woolly thinking and stereotypes. Antony Polonsky recreates this lost world in a way that avoids both sentimentalism and the simplification of the east European Jewish experience into a story of persecution and martyrdom. This is an important story whose relevance extends beyond the Jewish world or the bounds of east-central Europe."

Polonsky told the Justice that he learned he would receive this award in the middle of October and was very glad about it. 

"I was particularly pleased because it is a book on Jewish history, but represents how Jewish history is central to the history of Poland," he explained.

—Alana Abramson