Barbara Engelking

Barbara Engelking (born in Warsaw in 1962) is a Polish historian and sociologist who specializes in Holocaust studies. She founded and directs the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, and her work examines the destruction of Jews in German-occupied Poland, paying close attention to the responsibility of non-German perpetrators and bystanders. She is one of the most influential voices in this field in Poland.

She trained in psychology at the University of Warsaw, and in 1993 earned her doctorate in sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences with a thesis on the experience of the Holocaust as told in autobiographical accounts. Since 2014 she has chaired the International Auschwitz Council. Her book The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City (2009), written with Jacek Leociak, uses detailed maps to show the streets and community structures of the lost city. In 2018 she co-edited with Jan Grabowski Dalej jest noc, a 1,600-page study of nine counties in occupied Poland. Since 2015 she has argued that her research has been hampered by the nationalist PiS government, and her work has fuelled a heated public debate about wartime memory.