The prize is named after Witold Pilecki, a Polish World War II resistance leader who exposed the Nazi German genocide of Jews at the Auschwitz death camp, public broadcaster Polish Radio's IAR news agency reported.
Handed out by the state-run Pilecki Institute, the award seeks to honour "similarly heroic whistle blowers of today," organisers said.
"In various places around the globe, there is a need for people with similar courage and determination—people who study history, who write about it, and who uncover the truth," the research institute's director, Wojciech Kozłowski, said at an awards ceremony on Wednesday.
The Pilecki Book Award is granted across three categories: historical reportage, contemporary war journalism and historical research.
Filip Gańczak won the prize for best reportage with his biography of Jan Sehn, an expert on Auschwitz who fought to bring Nazi war criminals to account.
Britain's Christina Lamb received the award for best contemporary journalism, after exploring the female experience of war in her work Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does to Women.
Meanwhile, American author Eliyana Adler's book Survival on the Margins, about Polish Jewish war refugees in the Soviet Union, was named best work of scientific research.
Launched 120 years after Pilecki was born, the new award consists of a statuette and PLN 75,000 (EUR 16,000) in prize money, the IAR news agency reported.
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Source: IAR
Click on the "Play" button above for an audio report by Radio Poland’s Michał Owczarek.