On 26 January the director of the State Museum at Majdanek dr Tomasz Kranz was granted the National Leadership Award by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The American institution appreciated his long-time engagement in the Holocaust remembrance as well as the input in the field of education in Poland.

The award was presented by the USHMM director Sara Bloomfield. She emphasised the personal contribution of Tomasz Kranz in properly securing the memorials at Majdanek, Bełżec, and Sobibór, as well as the importance of those sites for the sake of dialogue about the past and the future.

The National Leadership Award is granted to exquisite partners of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, who make significant contributions to the goals defined in the institution’s mission.

Dr Tomasz Kranz is a historian, a Germanist, who has been working at the State Museum at Majdanek for over 40 years, and is its Director since 2007. He is also an author of over 300 publications regarding the topic of KL Lublin, the Holocaust history, museology, theory of historical educational, and the memory of World War II in the context of the Polish-German relations. For years he has been engaged in numerous museum councils and expert teams. He is the member of the Museums and Memorials Board at the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, and a member of the Polish delegation in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. He has received numerous awards for his academic achievements and innovations in the museum-pedagogy field (e.g. Gold Medal of the National Remembrance Sites Protector, Silver Cross of Merit, Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, the City of Lublin Medal of Merit).