IAC Members
Prof. Barbara Engelking - Chairwoman
Barbara Engelking was born in 1962. She is a sociologist and psychologist. Head of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The author of numerous papers and books on World War II and the Holocaust.
Research interests:
The Holocaust Experience in Relation to the Survivors; an attempt to describe the experience in light of all other available sources (official and personal documents, letters, reports, memoirs) and perspectives (victims, witnesses, perpetrators); history of the Warsaw Ghetto and its everyday life; everyday occupation of Warsaw; moral challenges and dilemmas during the Holocaust.
Avner Shalev - Deputy Chairman
Avner Shalev has been Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate since 1993. Upon becoming Chairman, Shalev initiated a multi-year development plan aimed at equipping Yad Vashem with the necessary tools to address the challenges of Holocaust remembrance in the 21st century.
Henryk Wujec - Deputy Chairman
Henryk Wujec was born in 1941. Graduated from the Faculty of Physics University of Warsaw. Socio-political activist. Currently, advisor to the President of the Republic of Poland.
Kazimierz Albin
Kazimierz Albin was born in Cracow in 1922. Before the outbreak of the war in 1939, he completed his first four years at the Bartołomiej Nowodworski Secondary School No. 1.
It was with deep sorrow that we received information about passing away of Kazimierz Albin on July 22, 2019.
Sara J. Bloomfield
Executive Director of the United Stated Holocaust Memorial Museum since 1999, she is also a founder of the National Institute for Holocaust Education and the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies.
Piotr M.A. Cywiński, Ph.D.
Born April 16, 1972 in Warsaw. Doctor of humanities, medieval historian, graduate of Marc Bloch University in Strasbourg, the Catholic University of Lublin, and the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Science.
Director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim since 2006.
Father Manfred Deselaers, Ph.D.
Manfred Deselaers. Born in Duesseldorf, Germany, on 19 May 1955, Manfred Deselaers is a Catholic priest from the diocese of Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen).
Havi Dreyfus, Ph.D.
Dr Havi Dreyfus (Ben-Sasson) was born on 1972 in Jerusalem, Israel. She graduated with an undergraduate degree, summa cum laude, in psychology and history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (HUJI) and completed her Ph.D dissertation entitled “Poland and Poles in the eyes of Polish Jews during the Second World War (1939-1944)” at HUJI in 2005.
Rabbi Irving Greenberg
Rabbi Irving Greenberg was born in 1933. Advocate of Christian-Jewish dialogue, a member of the International Auschwitz Council in the years 2000-2006. Head of the Council of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Signatory to the Dabru Emet declaration. In 2007, the Polish Council of Christians and Jews distinguished I. Greenberg with the title of the “Man of Reconciliation”.
David Harris
David Harris was born in 1949. Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee, one of the main representatives of the American Jewish environment in international forums.
Played a key role in organising the emigration of more than one million Jews from the Soviet Union and rescuing the Jewish community in Ethiopia. Honoured and distinguished on numerous occasions by governments of various countries, inter alia for support for Polish membership in NATO.
Christoph Heubner
Christoph Heubner was born in 1949. He is the deputy chairman of the International Auschwitz Committee.
Roman Kent
Roman Kent was born in 1929 in Łódź. He was a prisoner of Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen and other concentration camps. The president of the International Auschwitz Committee.
He was liberated together with his brother Leon on 23 April 1945 in Flossenbürg. In 1946 both of his brothers were allowed to leave to the United States as “orphans” together with other children Holocaust survivors. Roman Kent lives in New York. He is the chairman of American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and the treasurer of Jewish Claims Conference. Since 2003 he was a vice-president and since 2011 the president of the International Auschwitz Committee.
Serge Klarsfeld
Serge Klarsfeld was born in 1935. Historian, lawyer, board member of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah (Shoah Memorial Foundation), chairman of Fils et Filles des Déportés Juifs de France (Association of Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees from France), a member of the Council of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation.
Ronald Lauder
Ronald Lauder was born in 1944. American businessman and philanthropist, Chairman of the World Jewish Congress and founder of the Lauder Foundation. For almost twenty years has regularly supported the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Site.
In the late 80s, after visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Site, he pledged assistance in the assessment of needs and the acquisition of funds for carrying out necessary conseravation works. The results of his actions were numerous conservation tasks carried out in the 90s. Moreover, thanks to his financial support (approx. 2.5 million USD), professional technical workshops and conservation workshops were formed, which, since 2003, constitute the basic resource base for saving the material evidence of KL Auschwitz.
Agnieszka Magdziak-Miszewska
Born February 28, 1957 in Warsaw, and a graduate of Warsaw University (Polish) and the Jagiellonian University (theater studies).
Department director for Więź monthly from 1984-1989 and director of the independent Center for International Studies in Warsaw from 1989-1991.
Prof. Paweł Machcewicz
Paweł Machcewicz was born in 1966. Historian, Prime Minister’s Plenipotentiary for the Museum of the Second World War. He lectures at the University of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and the Collegium Civitas in Warsaw. He is also on the Council of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation.
Richard Prasquier, Ph.D.
Honorary Chairman of the Conseil représentatif des Institutions juives de France (CRIF – Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France).
Photo by Mikołaj Grynberg
Arsenij Rogiński
Arsenij Rogiński was born in 1946. Historian, chairman of the "Memorial" Association, which examines communist crimes (including crimes against the Polish population). In the 1980s, he was sentenced in a political process to prison for attempting to conduct free scientific research. Awarded the Knight's Cross and the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.
It was with deep sorrow that we received information about passing away of Arsenij Roginski on December 18, 2017.
Romani Rose
Romani Rose was born in Heidelberg in 1946. He is the leading figure in the movement for Sinti and Roma civil rights.
As a member of a German Sinti family that lost 13 members in concentration camps and the Holocaust during the Nazi era (his grandfather was murdered in Auschwitz), Romani Rose has been politically active since the 1970s in the struggles of the minority for acknowledgement and material compensation for the wrongs they have suffered.
Archbishop Grzegorz Ryś
Grzegorz Ryś was born in 1964. Auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese of Krakow. Doctor habilitatus of humanities in the history of the Church, rector of the Higher Theological Seminary of the Kraków Archdiocese between 2007 and 2011. Member of the “Tygodnik Powszechny” editorial team. Metropolitan Archbishop of Łódź from September 2017.
Marian Turski
Marian Turski was born on June 26, 1926 in Druskienniki, in today’s Lithuania.
In 1942, he was confined in the ghetto in Łódź (then Litzmannstadt). He was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. In the spring of 1945, he lived through the death march of former Auschwitz prisoners to Buchenwald. In 1945, Marian Turski became an active member of the youth branch of the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR), and later worked in the Press Department of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR). Since 1958, he has headed the history section for Polityka newsweekly.
He is active in numerous Jewish organizations, as chairman of the Jewish Historical Institute Association in Warsaw, and a member of the International Auschwitz Council, the Association Board that oversees the Wannsee Conference Center, and the Council of the Museum of the History of the Polish Jews.
Photo by Mikołaj Grynberg
Marek Zając - secretary
Journalist specializing in religious and social matters. From 2006 the secretary of the International Auschwitz Council; member and from 2015 the chairman of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation Council. Winner of the Bishop Jan Chrapak Vestige Prize for journalists in 2006. In 2012 honoured with the Silver Cross of Merit.