Israeli ex-ambassador honoured for building bridges between Poles and Jews

Nowak-Jeziorański was a Polish journalist and politician who served for many years as the head of the Polish section of Radio Free Europe. He died in 2005.

Adolf Juzwenko, director of the Ossoliński National Institute in the southwestern Polish city of Wrocław, which hosted the ceremony, described Weiss as “a great Jewish and Polish patriot.”

Weiss was visibly moved by the award and noted that those attending the ceremony included descendants of a Polish family that rescued him and members of his family from the Holocaust during World War II.

Weiss was born in the Polish town of Borysław, now Boryslav in Ukraine. He emigrated to Palestine in 1947.

During his long career, he has served as the Speaker of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, and Israel’s ambassador to Poland. He is currently a visiting professor at the University of Warsaw. Last year, he received the Order of the White Eagle, the highest Polish state decoration.

Past recipients of the Jan Nowak-Jeziorański Memorial Award include former US President George Bush Senior, former Czech President Vaclav Havel and former Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki.