Gunnar S. Paulsson

Gunnar S. Paulsson
Cover of Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw 1940-1945 by Gunnar S. Paulsson
Occupation	Historian, author
Notable works	Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw 1940-1945

Gunnar Svante (Steve) Paulsson is a Swedish-born Canadian historian, university lecturer and author who has taught in Britain, Canada, Germany and Italy.^[1]

Paulsson graduated from the Oxford University with a D.Phil. (Ph.D.) in 1998. He held the position of Lecturer and Director of the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust Studies at the University of Leicester in 1994–98, then served as the Senior Historian in the Holocaust Exhibition Project Office at the Imperial War Museum in London in 1998–2000. He was the Koerner visiting fellow and lecturer at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and Pearl Resnick fellow at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. He has also taught at the University of Toronto, Viadrina University and the University of Siena.

Though the Nazis forced most of Warsaw's Jews into the city's infamous ghetto during the Second World War, some 28,000 Jews either hid and never entered the Warsaw Ghetto, or escaped from it later in what Gunnar S. Paulsson calls »the greatest prison-break in history«. [Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940-1945] – the first detailed treatment of Jewish escape and hiding during the Holocaust – tells the story of these hidden Jews of Warsaw. — Reviews ^[2]

How many people in Poland rescued Jews? Of those that meet Yad Vashem's criteria – perhaps 100,000. Of those that offered minor forms of help – perhaps two or three times as many. Of those who were passively protective – undoubtedly the majority of the population. — Gunnar S. Paulsson ^[3]

Works

• Gunnar S. Paulsson (2002), Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940-1945. New Haven: Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0-300-09546-3. Sample Review.
• Published in Poland as Utajone miasto: Żydzi po aryjskiej stronie Warszawy 1940-1945 (Znak, 2008) Translator Elzbieta Olender-Dmowska; Editors, Barbara Engelking & Jacek Leociak
• Gunnar S. Paulsson, The Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum (Imperial War Museum, 2000)
• Editor of Barbara Engelking, Holocaust and Memory (Continuum, 2000)
• Two of his articles have been reprinted in D. Cesarani, ed, The Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies (London: Routledge, 2004) 6 vols.

1. "The Bridge over the Oeresund: The Historiography on the Expulsion of the Jews from Denmark, 1943" (originally in the Journal of Contemporary History, 30(1995) 431-464), and
2. "The Demography of Jews Hiding in Warsaw, 1943-45" (Originally in Polin 13(2000) 78-103)

• Gunnar S. Paulsson (2004). "The Demography of Jews in Hiding in Warsaw". The Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-27509-1. 
• Gunnar S. Paulsson (Summer–Autumn 1998). "The Rescue of Jews by Non-Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland" (PDF). Journal of Holocaust Education. Frank Cass, London. 7 (1&2): 19–44. Available with purchase. 
• Gunnar S. Paulsson (March 29, 2003), 'Polish Complicity In The Shoah Is A Myth' (online, Special Reports: Commentary).
• Gunnar S. Paulsson (May 5, 2008), On the Marginal Role of Poles In Abetting the Nazi Perpetrators (online reprint with Commentary).
• Gunnar S. Paulsson (2000), “The Demography of Jews in Hiding in Warsaw, 1943–1945,” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, volume 13/2000.
• Gunnar S. Paulsson (2001), “Evading the Holocaust: The Unexplored Continent of Holocaust Historiography,” in John K. Roth and Elisabeth Maxwell, eds., Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust, in an Age of Genocide (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave), volume 1/2001.
• Gunnar S. Paulsson, “Ringelblum Revisited: Polish-Jewish Relations in Occupied Warsaw, 1940–1945,” in Joshua D. Zimmerman, ed., Contested Memories: Poles and Jews during the Holocaust and Its Aftermath (New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press, 2003).

Awards

• 1998 Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History, awarded by the Institute of Contemporary History for "the best unpublished manuscript in one of the Institute's areas of interest (the two World Wars, extremist political movements of the left and right, East European and Jewish history)"
• 2004 Biennial Polish Studies Association/Orbis Prize for "the best first book in English on any aspect of Polish affairs published in the past two years"
• 2009 Inaugural Kazimierz Moczarski Prize for "the best historical book published in Poland in the past year" (for the Polish edition, Utajone miasto)

Notes and references

• Secret City book page (with note about the author)