Elżbieta Kwiecińska
PhD, Historian, Associate Professor of History at the University of Warsaw. She received her doctoral degree from the European University Institute in Florence (2021). Research interests of Dr. Kwiecińska include methodology and history of historiography, the intellectual, cultural and social history of Poland, Ukraine, Russia and Ashkenazi Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries with a special emphasis on nation-building processes and studies of colonialism. In her research, she adopts the perspective of global and transnational history.
Related sources:
Women’s Accounts of Extreme Violence: Stanislawa Kwiecinska’s Memoirs of Volhynia in 1943
This excerpt from her memoirs is by Stanislawa Kwiecinska (née Jelenkowska), the grandmother of the author of this commentary. Stanislawa was born on June 18, 1929, on the Stavchyny khutir, situated between the Polish village of Stara Huta and the Ukrainian village of Ruska Huta in Volhynia during the Second Polish Republic. She wrote her memoirs with her many descendants in mind: 9 children, 24 grandchildren, and 5 great-grandchildren. Stanislawa made notes in a notebook in the 2000s, and her youngest daughter, Anna Sikora, later typed the text and arranged for its publication in 2018. These memoirs serve as a testament to the life and values of traditional Polish communities in Volhynia before...