We are a bit last minute to post this, but if you can, do zoom in for this fascinating webinar tomorrow — Wednesday, June 10, at 3 AM Australian Eastern / 10 AM Pacific / 12 PM US Central / 1 PM US Eastern / 7 PM Warsaw / 8 PM Israel time.
Mapping the Archipelago of Lost Towns: Post-Holocaust Urban Lacunae in the Polish-Belarusian-Ukrainian Borderlands with Magdalena Waligórska, PhD
Part of the Zoom in on the Forum Series.
An exploration of space, memory, and the lasting scars of history, centered around the “Mapping the Archipelago of Lost Towns: Post-Holocaust Urban Lacunae in the Polish-Belarusian-Ukrainian Borderlands” research project.
While urban centers across Central and Eastern Europe suffered extensive devastation during World War II, the archipelago of smaller towns with substantial Jewish populations—the shtetls—faced complete and tragic destruction. Located at the epicenter of the so-called “Holocaust by bullets,” these communities were not merely depopulated; they were effectively wiped from the cultural map.
Dr. Magdalena Waligórska will be the guide through the findings of this research project, exploring the long-term consequences of this systematic population exchange in the “lost towns” of the Polish-Belarusian-Ukrainian borderlands, examining both the post-1945 strategies of erasing or adapting this “disinherited heritage” and the complex ways in which these spaces continue to function today.
It will be a navigation of this topography of absence and a discovery of how modern cartography and memory studies can help us interpret the silent lacunae left in the borderlands landscape.
CLICK TO REGISTER FOR THE ZOOM
Magdalena Waligórska, PhD, is a cultural historian and sociologist specializing in Holocaust studies, Jewish/non-Jewish relations, memory studies, and nationalism. Her academic career has included a Humboldt Fellowship at the Free University of Berlin and a position as an Assistant Professor of Eastern European History and Culture at the University of Bremen. She has published extensively on Jewish culture and identity, and is the author of two major monographs, published by Oxford University Press (2013) and Cambridge University Press (2023).
Read her 2022 JHE Have Your Say personal essay: In Search of the Lost Shtetl