American author and Romani rights activist (1942–2021)
Paul Polansky (February 17, 1942 – March 26, 2021) was an American writer and Romani activist.
Paul Polansky held a degree in journalism, history and rhetoric from Marquette University. In the early 1990s, he founded the Czech Historical Research Center in the United States and participated in several American and European scientific conferences on human rights in Eastern Europe.
In the 1990s, he discovered 40,000 documents in the Czech archives on the Gypsy extermination camp in Lety, run by the Czechs during World War II. After making this discovery, he moved to the Czech Republic to continue his research. He also began organizing conferences devoted to them at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
In 1999, Polansky began working for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to serve as an advisor for Roma (Gypsy) refugees in Kosovo. He headed the Kosovo Roma Refugee Foundation (KRRF), an NGO working for the suffering residents of the Romany camps in Mitrovica. From July 1999 to September 2009, he was the head of the mission of the Association for Dangerous Nations in Kosovo and Serbia. On December 10, 2004, the Weimar City Council awarded Polansky with the Human Rights Award.
Polansky died in 2021 due to an illness.
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