Shmuel Krakowski

Shmuel Krakowski, Samuel Krakowski or Stefan Krakowski (, March 23, 1926 – September 2018) was an Israeli historian specializing in the Holocaust in Poland. After surviving the Holocaust, Krakowski worked for the intelligence and security services of People's Republic of Poland. He later became the Director of the Yad Vashem Archives in Israel.

Early life
Krakowski was born in Warsaw to a Polish-Jewish family to father Baruch and mother Miriam, growing up in Łódź. He joined the Zionist youth organization Hashomer Hatzair as a teenager. He was jailed with other Jews in the Łódź Ghetto during World War II, where he was involved with underground resistance. After the Łódź Ghetto was liquidated, he survived concentration camps at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Theresienstadt.

Career

Poland
Krakowski returned to Poland in 1945, where he joined the Communist government. He served until 1966, when he switched to work for the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. Following the 1968 antisemitic campaign, he moved to Israel and worked for the Yad Vashem until 1993.

Israel 
He received a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His PhD thesis concerned the armed Jewish resistance to the General Government. This research won Krakowski the 1975 Yitzhak Sadeh Prize for military research. Krakowski also taught courses at Tel Aviv University.

The volume of Yad Vashem tripled during Krakowski's tenure. The relations with the Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes at Ludwigsburg, Germany were also strengthened. He improved the reports of Nazi war criminals, including the files of the Soviet commission of investigation of Nazi crimes and the archives of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, by integrating the Soviet archives with the Yad Vashem archives.

Post-retirement 
He served as an adviser to Yad Vashem's International Institute for Holocaust Research for about five years following retirement, and a member of The Commission for the Designation of the Righteous Among the Nations.

Works
 The War of the Doomed: Jewish Armed Resistance in Poland, 1942–1944 (1984)
 Unequal Victims: Poles and Jews During World War Two (with Yisrael Gutman, 1988)
 Chelmno, A Small Village in Europe: The First Nazi Mass Extermination Camp (2009)

Related pages
 Yehuda Bauer

References

Category:Historians
Category:1926 births
Category:2018 deaths
Category:Jewish academics
Category:Historical studies
Category:Holocaust survivors