Jakub Nowakowski

Jakub Nowakowski was born and raised in Kazimierz, the former Jewish district of Kraków. Coming from a non-Jewish family that lived in Kazimierz for generations, from early age he was compelled to research the history of his neighbourhood.

In 2007 he graduated from the Department of Jewish Studies at the Jagiellonian University,  where he wrote a thesis on Jewish resistance in Kraków during the Second World War. 

In 2005 Nowakowski joined the staff of the newly open (2004) Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków. In 2006 he joined the Museum’s Education Department, and in 2008 he became its manager. In 2010, after an international competition, Nowakowski was appointed as the director of the Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków, Poland. He served in this role for 13 years. In 2023 he was appointed as the director of the Cape Town Holocaust & Genocide Centre. 

Jakub Nowakowski is the co-author of Museum publications (among others): Poland: A Jewish Matter. Proceedings of a symposium exploring contemporary Jewish life in Poland, marking the close of Jewish programming for Polska! Year. He is also a curator of the Museum exhibitions (among other): Fighting for Dignity. Jewish Resistance in Kraków, A City Not Forgotten. Memories of Jewish Lwów and the Holocaust, The Girl in the Diary. Searching for Rywka from Łódź ghetto. The exhibitions he has curated have been presented in Poland and internationally.