Anna Bikont

Anna Bikont
Born 17 July 1954
Warsaw, Poland
Education Warsaw University
Occupation writer
Spouse(s) Piotr Bikont (deceased 2017)

Anna Bikont (born 17 July 1954) is a Polish psychologist and writer associated with the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper, based in Warsaw since its founding in 1989. Her book Le Crime et le Silence, first published in Polish in 2004, won the European Book Prize in 2011. It was published in English in 2015 as The Crime and the Silence: Confronting the Massacre of Jews in Wartime Jedwabne.[1]

Life

Bikont was born in Warsaw as a daughter of journalist Wilhelmina Skulska (born as Lea Horowitz; 1918–1998), who was Jewish, and writer Andrzej Kruczkowski, who is Catholic. She has a sister, Maria Kruczkowska.

Anna Bikont got her MA in Psychology at Warsaw University, and worked there until 1988. Between 1982 and 1989 she was an underground Solidarity activist. She was co-founder and editor of Tygodnik Mazowsze weekly, Poland's largest underground publication.[2]

In 1989 Bikont was among the persons founding Gazeta Wyborcza, the first legal newspaper published outside the communist government's control. It became independent of Solidarity in 1990. Bikont has continued to work for the paper as senior journalist.[3]

After controversy greeted Jan T. Gross's history of the Jedwabne massacre, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (2001), the government commissioned an investigation by prosecutor Radosław Ignatiew for the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN). Bikont began her own journalistic investigation, interviewing numerous people in Jedwabne, including descendants of survivors and persons living in the city when Gross's book was published.[1]

Bikont expanded her work into the non-fiction book My z Jedwabnego (2004, Jedwabne: Battlefield of Memory). It was published in French in 2011, under the title, Le crime et le silence. This edition won the European Book Prize.[4] It was published in English in 2015 as The Crime and the Silence: Confronting the Massacre of Jews in Wartime Jedwabne.[1]

Writer Julian Barnes, one of the judges of the 2011 European Book Prize, describes her history as "more than a book of memory. It is also a book about forgetting, about the pollution of memory, about the conflict between the easy, convenient truth and the awkward, harder truth. It is a work that grows from its journalistic manner and origins into the powerful writing of necessary history."[1]

Her husband, journalist and director Piotr Bikont (1955–2017), died in a car accident.

Selected publications

Books
  • Sendlerowa. W ukryciu ('Sendler: In Hiding'), Wołowiec: Wydawnictwo Czarne, 2017.
  • The Crime and the Silence: Confronting the Massacre of Jews in Wartime Jedwabne. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015.
  • Lawina i Kamienie ('The Avalanche and the Stones', co-authored with Joanna Szczęsna), Warsaw: Prószynski, 2006.
  • My z Jedwabnego ('Jedwabne: Battlefield of Memory'), Warsaw: Prószyński, 2004; Wydawnictwo Czarne, 2010; also published in France as Le crime et le silence, Sweden and the Czech Republic.
  • Pamiątkowe rupiecie. Biografia Wisławy Szymborskiej ('Dusty Keepsakes. The biography of Wisława Szymborska', co-authored with Joanna Szczęsna), Warsaw: Prószyński i S-ka, 1997; Cracow: ZNAK, 2011; also published in the Netherlands, Israel, Italy, Spain, and to be published in Russia.
  • And I Still See Their Faces; Images of Polish Jews, (editor), 1996.
  • Małe vademecum Peerelu ('The Little Vade Mecum of Living in the Polish People's Republic', co-authored with Piotr Bikont and Wojciech Cesarski), Warsaw: Agora, 1990.
Selected Essays
  • „Anachnu m'Jedwabne”, in: Ha-heshbon ha-polani: Imut im Zikaron (Facing Memory: The Polish Account), ed. Miri Paz, Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2007.
  • „A Belligerent Voice in Defence of Peace, or Europeans in Wroclaw”, Edinburgh: Edinburgh Review nr 121, 2007
  • „Lechosław Goździk. Il revoluzionario e il pescatore”, Roma: MicroMega 9/2006
  • „L'intimidee”, in: La vie est un reportage, Paris: Les editions Noir sur Blanc, 2005
  • „We of Jedwabne”, in: The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland, ed. Antony Polonsky and Joanna B. Michlic, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004.
  • „Ryszard Kapuscinski celebrates Herodotus” (interview with Ryszard Kapuściński), New York: Omnivore, A Journal of Writing and Visual Culture from the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, Autumn 2003
  • „Seen from Jedwabne”, Jerusalem: Yad Vashem Studies XXX, 2004
  • „Neighbours”, Index of Censorship, UK: Thanet Press, 2001

Selected awards

  • 2011 - European Book Prize for “Le Crime et le Silence” (“My z Jedwabnego”).
  • 2005 - Best History Book of the Year, awarded by Polityka weekly, for “My z Jedwabnego”.
  • 2005 – shortlisted for the Nagroda Nike (Nike Prize), the Polish equivalent of the Booker Prize, for “My z Jedwabnego”.
  • 2001 – the Grand Press prize - the most prestigious journalistic award in Poland, for articles on the crime in Jedwabne, published by Gazeta Wyborcza.
Fellowships
  • Cullman Fellowship, New York Public Library, New York, 2008/2009
  • Visiting Fellow, The New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, New York, January–March 2003

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Barnes, Julian. "Even Worse than We Thought": Review of Anna Bikont's The Crime and the Silence: Confronting the Massacre of Jews in Wartime Jedwabne, New York Review of Books, 19 November 2015; accessed 2 April 2018
  2. ↑ Shana Penn, Solidarity's Secret: The Women who Defeated Communism, The University of Michigan Press, 2005
  3. ↑ "Anna Bikont", in Agnieszka Wójcińska, Reporterzy bez fikcji. Rozmowy z polskimi reporterami (Reporters without fiction. Conversations with Polish reporters), Seria: Poza serią, Warsaw: Czaarne, 2011
  4. ↑ Julian Barnes, "Judging the European Book prize for 2011", The Guardian, 16 December 2011
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