Pilecki Institute NYC

Pilecki Institute NYC Pilecki Institute NYC is a public research institution.

It safeguards the values of democracy and freedom, contributes a distinct perspective to Europe’s history by bringing the Polish experience of the twentieth century into international discourse.

The Pilecki Institute in New York is pleased to host the Future Classics Scholars Gala Concert on Thursday, October 22, ...
10/14/2026

The Pilecki Institute in New York is pleased to host the Future Classics Scholars Gala Concert on Thursday, October 22, 2026, at 7 p.m.

The concert brings together the fifteen recipients of the inaugural Future Classics scholarship for an evening of Polish classical music. These exceptionally talented young Polish instrumentalists and vocalists will perform works by Polish composers, sharing the artistry and ambition that are shaping their paths toward international careers.

Future Classics was established by the Polish National Foundation (Polska Fundacja Narodowa), which promotes Poland’s culture, history, and national heritage worldwide. The Foundation supports educational, artistic, and professional development initiatives, encouraging entrepreneurship, innovation, and excellence in Poland’s creative sectors.

The program’s educational partner, the Julian Cochran Foundation, is a Warsaw-based nonprofit that has supported classical music culture in Poland since 2016. Through scholarships, educational initiatives, concerts, mentoring, and networking, it helps emerging musicians navigate the crucial transition from formal education to professional artistic careers and plan for long-term success.

Join us for an evening celebrating Polish composers and some of the most promising young voices and talents in classical music!

📅 Thursday, October 22, 2026
🕖 7:00 p.m.
📍 Pilecki Institute USA, 92 Greenwich Street, New York, NY 10006

✉️ To request an invitation, please email [email protected]. Invitations will be confirmed on a first-come, first-served basis, subject to availability.

Learn more: www.futureclassics.pl

10/12/2026

What does it mean to teach about the Holocaust—and how do we keep its memory alive?

Historians and educators who took part in “Memory in Transition: A Transatlantic Perspective on Holocaust Education” at the Pilecki Institute reflect on why this history still matters.

As fewer survivors remain to share their experiences firsthand, each generation carries the responsibility to preserve both the facts and the human stories behind them. Politics, education, and digital technologies shape how we remember, making thoughtful, informed engagement even more essential.

The conversation also turns to stories of rescue that rarely appear in history books—stories of people across Europe who chose to help persecuted Jews in the most dangerous circumstances. Their experiences reveal the complexity of human choices during the Holocaust—and invite us to consider what it means to act with decency when it matters most.

These stories are at the heart of the exhibition “Between Life and Death. Stories of Rescue during the Holocaust.” Featuring the experiences of rescuers and survivors from fifteen European countries, the exhibition pays tribute to those who offered help despite the threat of imprisonment, deportation, or death.

The exhibition is on view at the Pilecki Institute through October 29, 2026.

📍 92 Greenwich Street, New York
🎟️ Free admission

Gallery hours:
Tuesday–Thursday: 12–6 PM
Friday: 12–8 PM
Saturday: 12–7 PM

The exhibition was prepared by the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS) in cooperation with the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and the Silent Heroes Memorial Centre in Berlin.

10/09/2026

Welcome to our new podcast, “Defying Empires”!

In the 20th century, Europe was caught between two totalitarian regimes, but across the continent, millions chose to resist.

To learn about the crimes committed by N**i Germany and the Soviet Union, and discover the fascinating stories of those who dared to stand up against them, tune in to our new podcast, hosted by Alina Nowobilska, a historian, blogger, and podcaster, and featuring a lineup of fascinating guests.

In the first episode, Alina speaks with Dr. Ian Garner about Soviet propaganda, its connections to contemporary Russian propaganda surrounding the war in Ukraine, and much more.

Watch the first episode here: https://youtu.be/qQqhFieSCVc

New episodes will be released twice a month on the Pilecki Institute’s new English-language YouTube channel.

Don’t forget to subscribe!

You are cordially invited to a special program dedicated to the Augustów Roundup—the largest Soviet crime committed agai...
10/06/2026

You are cordially invited to a special program dedicated to the Augustów Roundup—the largest Soviet crime committed against Polish citizens after World War II.

In July 1945, Soviet forces carried out a massive operation in northeastern Poland, arresting thousands of people. Hundreds disappeared without a trace, and the fate of many victims remains unknown to this day.

The program will include:

• A presentation on the history of the Augustów Roundup
• A live, guided virtual tour of the permanent exhibition
• A listening session featuring recordings from the albums LIPCOWI ’45 and LIPCOWE ’45

Choose one of two sessions:

Tuesday, October 13 | 6:30 PM
Wednesday, October 14 | 6:30 PM

Pilecki Institute
92 Greenwich Street
New York, NY 10006

Admission is free. Registration is recommended. To register, email [email protected].

A remarkable historical discovery by the Pilecki Institute has made the pages of The Times.Under the headline “Sex, slea...
10/03/2026

A remarkable historical discovery by the Pilecki Institute has made the pages of The Times.

Under the headline “Sex, sleaze and schnapps: N**i memoir reveals everyday business of terror,” The Times reports on a newly uncovered private memoir written by a German N**i bureaucrat serving in occupied Poland.

“A newly revealed account exposes the corruption, cruelty and casual indifference of a German administrator in occupied Poland,” writes journalist Oliver Moody.

The extraordinary document offers a rare glimpse into the everyday machinery of the German occupation — not through the eyes of its highest-ranking perpetrators, but from the perspective of a junior civilian official involved in its administration.

“This ‘spectacular’ private memoir was recently handed to the Pilecki Institute, a Polish government body that documents the crimes of 20th-century totalitarianism. It was available to The Times on condition that the author’s identity should be concealed at the behest of the donor.”

The article draws extensively on the research of Joanna Nikel from the Pilecki Institute, who has analyzed the papers:
“Joanna Nikel, a researcher at the Pilecki Institute who has analyzed the papers, said that while the memoirs of many Wehrmacht soldiers and high-ranking N**is had already come to light, it was vanishingly rare for historians to obtain this kind of private testimony from the more junior civilian officials who had worked on the minutiae of the occupation.”

“In 1943 the author, a self-described ‘Prussian’, was approaching his 30th birthday and had recently finished his doctorate in jurisprudence. He had joined the SS in 1933 and the N**i party in 1937, and applied for a job in the administration of the Generalgouvernement, a large tranche of central and eastern Poland that was regarded by the Germans as a colony to be stripped of food and resources for the Reich.”

Moody also places this individual story within the wider context of the brutal German occupation of Poland:
“They had decapitated Polish society by murdering the intelligentsia and shut down the schools and universities with the aim of degrading the Poles to the condition of illiterate labourers and ultimately expelling them to Siberia.”

A remarkable historical source — and a rare insight into how the machinery of occupation and terror operated at the level of everyday N**i bureaucracy.

Read the full article in The Times here:
https://t.co/CHv30dDfzc

10/02/2026

What does the legacy of the Nuremberg Trials mean for contemporary international law? Why has Nuremberg’s success proven so difficult to replicate today? What aspects of the Nuremberg Trials still require further research?

Prof. Dr Christoph Safferling, Director of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy, joins our host, Prof. Patrycja Grzebyk of the Pilecki Institute, for the first episode of the English-language edition of the podcast “Themis in the World of Clio,” devoted to history and law.

Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/twC1RrJ7LdQ

We will release new episodes twice a month on our new English-language YouTube channel. Stay tuned!

On October 1, 1990, justice finally came for Witold Pilecki.Forty-two years after Pilecki was executed by Poland’s Stali...
10/01/2026

On October 1, 1990, justice finally came for Witold Pilecki.

Forty-two years after Pilecki was executed by Poland’s Stalinist regime, the Supreme Court in Warsaw acquitted him and his co-defendants, overturning the 1948 verdict that had condemned him to death.

For decades under communist rule, Pilecki’s story was largely suppressed. His family faced discrimination, and his children were denied admission to university. His story also remained largely absent from the broader European historical consciousness.

Pilecki had fought for a free Poland. In 1940, he deliberately allowed himself to be arrested and sent to Auschwitz, where he organized a resistance network and documented what he witnessed. His reports reached the Polish underground and the Polish government-in-exile. After the war, he continued his resistance, documenting the activities of the new communist regime.

In 1948, he was executed.

On October 1, 1990, the verdict against him was finally overturned.

Thousands of previously unseen photographs and films are opening a new window onto the German invasion and occupation of...
09/26/2026

Thousands of previously unseen photographs and films are opening a new window onto the German invasion and occupation of Poland.

The Pilecki Institute and the Warsaw Rising Museum have signed a strategic cooperation agreement with ECPAD, the French Defense Communication and Audiovisual Production Center, gaining access to unique German wartime materials that have remained largely unknown in Poland.

ECPAD holds approximately 3.5 million photographs and 16,800 films. Among them is an extraordinary German collection created by German propaganda companies (Propagandakompanien) that accompanied the Wehrmacht during its military campaigns. The materials were secured by the U.S. Army after the fall of the Third Reich in 1945 and later divided among the Allies.

The first phase of the new partnership brings Polish institutions access to more than 10,000 photographs and 41 documentary and operational films, including materials documenting the September 1939 campaign, occupied Poland, and territories that are today part of Ukraine and Belarus.

Among the newly presented photographs are striking images of Warsaw in September 1939—German soldiers writing inscriptions on aerial bombs before air raids, the destruction caused by the bombing, and civilians amid the ruins of the capital.

The Pilecki Institute also presented previously unknown photographs from Bydgoszcz, documenting the entry of German forces and subsequent mass arrests of local residents, as well as early acts of persecution and humiliation of the Jewish population in German-occupied Poland.

What makes these materials particularly important is that in many cases complete sequences of negatives have survived. Until now, historians sometimes knew only individual frames selected and circulated by N**i propaganda. Examining the full sequences makes it possible to restore context, reconstruct the chronology of events, and critically examine how images were used to manipulate the historical narrative.

The materials will now undergo scholarly analysis, identification, and cataloging. They will gradually become available online with historical metadata, while full high-resolution reproductions will be accessible to researchers in the reading rooms of the Pilecki Institute and the Warsaw Rising Museum.

The agreement marks the beginning of a long-term partnership encompassing archival research, scholarship programs, joint publications, and future exhibitions—bringing previously inaccessible sources into historical research and making them available to future generations.

Photo: Jan Sochaczewski/ IP in Warsaw

On September 19, 1940, Witold Pilecki made an extraordinary choice: he deliberately allowed himself to be arrested by th...
09/20/2026

On September 19, 1940, Witold Pilecki made an extraordinary choice: he deliberately allowed himself to be arrested by the Germans so he could enter Auschwitz.

His mission was to infiltrate the camp, establish a resistance network, and inform the outside world about the crimes being committed there.

At the time of Pilecki’s arrival, Auschwitz primarily served as a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners. Pilecki would spend more than two and a half years there, organizing resistance, helping fellow prisoners survive, and gathering information about what was happening inside the camp.

In April 1943, he escaped from Auschwitz together with Edward Ciesielski and Jan Redzej. But his fight against totalitarianism did not end there. He later took part in the Warsaw Uprising, and after the war, he continued his intelligence and underground activities under the communist regime.

In 1947, Pilecki was arrested by the communist authorities. After brutal interrogation and a show trial, he was executed on May 25, 1948.

Pilecki’s life became a powerful symbol of resistance to both N**i Germany and the communist regime imposed on postwar Poland.

Today, on the anniversary of his arrest, we remember his courage, his extraordinary sense of duty, and the choices he made in the face of unimaginable danger.

Foto: Photo: Muzeum Dom Rodziny Pileckich/ The Pilecki Family Home Museum

Address

92 Greenwich Street
New York, NY

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Pilecki Institute NYC posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Featured

Share

Category