Tomasz Kuncewicz, AJCF Director, named as the 2022 Irena Sendler Memorial Award Recipient
Under his visionary leadership since September 2000, the AJCF has made exceptional progress in preserving Jewish memory and material heritage in Oświęcim, the town in closest proximity to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi extermination site where European Jews, other persecuted minority groups, and POWs suffered unspeakable crimes against humanity.
For Mr. Kuncewicz’s accomplishments, the nomination panel was unanimous in recommending him for the 2022 award. “Tomasz Kuncewicz, our 2022 awardee has, with vision, persistence, and innovation, undertaken and achieved an ambitious mission to restore dignity to and understanding of the Jewish community that lived in the town closest to the Nazi extermination camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau before and during WWII. Mr. Kuncewicz and his team of educators, curators, and heritage conservationists have created a seminal educational complex, the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation, located in reconstructed physical spaces representing prewar Jewish life — including a synagogue, a home, and a park — and breathed new life into them for contemporary educational programs that teach about the Holocaust and promote understanding and reconciliation,” said Tad Taube, Chairman of Taube Philanthropies and Honorary Consul of the Republic of Poland in San Francisco.
The Taube Philanthropies’ 2022 Irena Sendler Memorial Award, named for the Polish social worker who saved Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto during the Nazi occupation, was announced on Monday, May 9, 2022, marking the fourteenth anniversary of Irena Sendler’s death on May 8, 2008. Past Awardees include, among others: Aleksander Kwaśniewski, Dariusz Stola and Barbara Engelking.
For more than 30 years, Taube Philanthropies has been a leader in supporting diverse educational, research, cultural, community, and youth organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area, Poland, and Israel. Founded by businessman and philanthropist Tad Taube in 1981, and now led by Tad and his wife Dianne Taube, the organization works to ensure that citizens have the freedom and opportunity for advancement of their goals and dreams.
