Gunnar S. Paulsson

Gunnar Svante Paulsson is a Swedish-born Canadian historian, university lecturer, and author who has taught in Britain, Canada, Germany, and Italy. He specializes in history of The Holocaust and has been described as "an expert on that period". He is best known for his 2002 book, Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw 1940-1945.

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Education and career

Paulsson graduated from Carleton University in 1968 with a degree in psychology and worked in an unrelated career until 1989 when he began graduate study in history at the University of Toronto. He completed a D.Phil. in Modern History in 1998 at Oxford University, while simultaneously holding the position of Lecturer and Director of the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust Studies at the University of Leicester in 1994–98. He 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.
Paulsson is best known for his book, Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw 1940-1945, and his article, "The Bridge over the Øresund: the Historiography on the Expulsion of the Jews from Denmark, 1943."

''Secret City''

Paulsson's book, Secret City, is a social history of the Jews who escaped from the Warsaw ghetto and tried to survive, living illegally "on the Aryan side". In its original form as his doctoral thesis, it was awarded the Franklin Prize in Contemporary History. The English edition was awarded the biennial PSA/Orbis in 2004, and the Polish edition, Utajone Miasto: Żydzi po "aryjskiej" stronie Warszawy 1940-1945 was awarded the inaugural Moczarski Prize for the 2009 best book in history.

Works

Books

Gunnar S. Paulsson, Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940-1945. New Haven: Yale University Press,. '
Published in Poland as Utajone miasto: Żydzi po aryjskiej stronie Warszawy 1940-1945 Translator Elzbieta Olender-Dmowska; Editors, Barbara Engelking & Jacek Leociak
Gunnar S. Paulsson, The Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum
Editor of Barbara Engelking, Holocaust and Memory

Articles and book chapters'

Gunnar S. Paulsson, "Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics: A reply to Havi Dreifuss", Gal-ed: On the History and Culture of the Polish Jews, vol. 23

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.
Gunnar S. Paulsson, "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, volume 1/2001.
Gunnar S. Paulsson, "The Demography of Jews in Hiding in Warsaw, 1943–1945," Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry'', volume 13.

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 "
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"