It is with great sadness that we received the news that Robert Kuwałek, employee of the Research Department of the State Museum at Majdanek, outstanding specialist in history of the Holocaust and fates of Jewish population in the Lublin region, passed away suddenly on June 6, 2014.

He left his wife and daughter.

Robert Kuwałek was born in Lublin in 1966, graduated from the Catholic University of Lublin, where he studied history. He worked at the State Archives in Lublin, he was a teacher in the Stanisław Wyspiański Secondary School in Lublin. Since 1999 he was employed at the State Museum at Majdanek, in the Research Department. In 2002 he was endowed a scholarship by the Kosciuszko Foundation for conducting some research at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and National Archives in College Park. In 2004-2007 he was a co-originator and head of the Museum – Memorial Site in Bełżec. In 2008 he was decorated by the President of Poland with the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, and in 2014 he was awarded a “Rising in the Warsaw Ghetto” Honorary Medal. He was internationally renown and respected specialist in history and culture of Jews. The author and co-author of many scholarly works, including the first monograph of the Bełżec death camp (translated into French and German) and the edition of sources related with this camp. Recently his academic interests were centred on the history of the Sobibór death camp, he was in the team preparing the scenario of the exhibition to be shown in the new museum complex. His unexpected death is an irreparable loss to the Museum and to us all.