Body of Missing Holocaust Scholar Robert Kuwalek Is Found in Ukraine

Robert Kuwalek (R) giving a tour of the Belzec Death Camp Memorial.

By JTA June 8, 2014

The body of Robert Kuwalek, one of Poland’s foremost Holocaust scholars, was found days after he had been reported missing in Ukraine.

Kuwalek, 47, had been reported missing Thursday while on a visit to Lviv. His body was found over the weekend.

The Polish consulate in Lviv confirmed his death, but no details about the cause of death were released.

Kuwalek, who was not Jewish, was an expert on the Holocaust in southeastern Poland and what is now western Ukraine. Based in Lublin, Kuwalek was a curator and educator at the State Museum at the former Majdanek concentration and death camp and also had served as director of the museum at the former Belzec death camp.

He published widely on topics relating to the Holocaust and also on Jewish heritage and history.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO