Ruta Sakowska, winner of the Jan Karski & Pola Nirenska award has passed away

Maria Zawadzka, 16 November 2016
Dr. Ruta Sakowska passed away on August 22nd, 2011. She was born on July 29th, 1922 in Vilnius. She was the daughter of Mejer Pups, famous journalist of the Jewish press. Her funeral was held on Friday, August 26, at the Nożyk Synagogue in Warsaw.

After graduating from high school, she was studying in Warsaw and Pińsk. She survived the Second World War in USSR, where she worked at a textile factory in Fergana. From 1944 to 1949 she studied history at universities in Moscow and Vilnius and later she worked as teacher and lecturer at the Vilnius Teachers’ Institute.

In 1958 she returned to Poland together with her parents. On November 8th, 1958 she started working at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. In 1975 she defended her doctoral thesis entitled “Social life at the Warsaw ghetto” at the JHI.

She was an unquestionable authority and outstanding specialist in the history of the Warsaw ghetto, researcher and editor of the Ringelblum Archive, author of groundbreaking works devoted to the history of the Holocaust in Poland.

She was honored with the Jan Karski and Pola Nirenska Award, the historical award of the “Polityka” weekly and award of the Warsaw Jewish Community for her outstanding achievements for the research of Jewish history.

The director and staff of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute wrote: “She was our friend for over 50 years of research work at the Jewish Historical Institute. We are saying goodbye to her with a feeling of irreparable loss”.