Ewa Junczyk-Ziomecka, Consul General of the Polish Republic in New York

Ewa Junczyk-Ziomecka assumed her position as the Consul General of the Republic of Poland in New York on March 1, 2010. Before, between January 2006 and February 2010, she served first as an Undersecretary, and, since April 2008, as a Secretary of State at the Chancery of the President of the Republic of Poland in charge of social issues.

Junczyk-Ziomecka graduated from the Law Department and post- graduate journalistic studies at the University of Warsaw. In her early professional career Junczyk-Ziomecka worked for the "Sztandar Mlodych" daily, "Panorama" weekly (the Warsaw edition); she also published articles in the "Kultura" and "Tygodnik Powszechny" weeklies. In August 1980, she was at the Gdansk Shipyard at the time of the Solidarity ignited strike. During the martial law in Poland, she was officially banned by the communist regime from working as a journalist. In 1982, Junczyk Ziomecka received the so-called one-way passport and left for the United States to join the emigre community of former Solidarity members.

In the United States, she worked for "The Citizen", and then as the editor-in chief of the "Dziennik Polski" daily in Detroit, Ml. At that time Junczyk Ziomecka was also a member of the Dialogue group composed of the representatives of Polish, Ukrainian and Jewish Americans, established to foster understanding between those three communities. She also headed the Polish Community's Electoral Commission in Michigan at the time of the first presidential election staged in Poland after 1989.

After her return to Poland in 1993, Junczyk-Ziomecka assumed the responsibilities of a representative of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Her activities at that time also encompassed initiating and co-organizing conferences about the Solidarity trade union and the Round Table Accords. Simultaneously, she worked as the managing editor and then the deputy editor-in-chief of the "Twoj Styl" monthly. In addition, she was a member of the Program Board and worked as a lecturer at the Warsaw School of Journalism, the first private higher school of journalism established after 1989.

In 2001, she was nominated the director for the development of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and starting in 2005 she became the deputy director of the Museum responsible for contacts with the Jewish and Polish communities in the United States and the promotion of the Museum's project in Poland and abroad.

She is an active member of the "Otwarta Rzeczpospolita" Association, of the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute and of the Association of Polish Journalists, Ewa Junczyk-Ziomecka co-authored a collection of reportages about the strikes in the Gdansk shipyard in August 1980 titled "21 dlugich dni" (Twenty One Long Days), a book about Pope John Paul II published in the United States, "Czlowiek wsrod nas" (A Man Among Us), and a book "Jak wyjechac do Stanow i przezyc" (How to Get to the United States and Survive).

She has a daughter who is also a journalist and a son.



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From: American Council for Polish Culture (ACPC) 63rd Convention Program, July 14-17, 2011, Cleveland, Ohio, at the Pope John Paul II Polish-American Cultural Center