Calendar

The history of Łódź is inextricably linked with that of its Jewish community, one of the most important in Eastern Europe before World War II.

In commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the liquidation of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, POLIN Museum and its partners are organizing a groundbreaking event for scholarly discussion and collaboration. This conference featuring seven panels and a keynote address will take place on August 25-27 at POLIN Museum in Warsaw. The event will feature the newest research from an interdisciplinary perspective on the history of the Jewish community in Łódź before, during, and after the Holocaust, drawing on such fields as history, memory studies, cultural studies, urban studies, economics, and the arts.

The conference will be audio and video recorded.

• August 25-27, 2024 (Sunday – Tuesday), POLIN Museum in Warsaw, Poland
• Featuring a keynote address by Natalia Aleksiun (University of Florida), 
  “Between Shtetl and Metropolis: Writing Jewish Urban History in East Central Europe”
• Registration is mandatory. Register →
• Program in PDF →

The conference will focus on all aspects of Jewish life as it existed in the Baltic region before, during, and after the Holocaust on topics which include, but are not limited to, culture, art, politics, literature, religion, music, photography, history, law, philosophy, restitution, memory, family studies, and material culture. All aspects of Jewish life that existed in the region from the beginning of the 20^th century up until the present will be considered, though emphasis will be given to those topics that address how the Holocaust impacted Jewish life.

Click to see details and program

Click to register for online access

While the historical shtetl has been studied extensively, the post-Jewish town, as a historical phenomenon and evolving site of contested memory, has received less attention. After the Holocaust, the many towns where Jewish communities had lived for centuries and where they had created a distinctive way of life became places without Jews. We want to explore this process of transforming shtetls into post-Jewish space.

The conference is organized as part of the events accompanying the new temporary exhibition of POLIN Museum “(post)JEWISH… Shtetl Opatów Through the Eyes of Mayer Kirshenblatt” opening on May 17, 2024. The exhibition will juxtapose postwar memories of prewar Jewish life in Polish Opatów, as recorded in words and paintings by a self-taught artist – Mayer Kirshenblatt, with the postwar post-Jewish town.

Program: 

Day 1: Sunday, September 8

• • 14:30–15:30 Tour of post-Jewish: Shtetl Opatów through the Eyes of Mayer Kirshenblatt (registration limit exhausted)

• • 15:30–16:00 Coffee break

• • 16.00–17:00 Opening Roundtable – Defining the post-Jewish Town
    Moderator: Aleksandra Jakubczak
     Dariusz Stola, Antony Polonsky, Natalia Romik
  • 17:00–17:30 Joanna Król-Komła presenting “Virtual Shtetl”
    Moderator: Aleksandra Jakubczak

• • 17:30–18:00 Coffee break

• • 18:00–19:30 Keynote: Jeffrey Veidlinger, In the Shadow of the Shtetl: Jewish Memories of Small-Town Life in Post-1945 Ukraine

• 19:30 Dinner for the conference speakers

Day 2: Monday, September 9

• • 9:30–11:00 The Shtetl as Material Witnesses
    Chair: Magdalena Waligórska
     Małgorzata Michalska-Nakonieczna, Elements of Jewish Architectural Heritage within the Urban Structures and Cultural Landscapes of Small Towns in the Lublin Region

    Emil Majuk, Destination Shtetl: Traces of Jewish Heritage in Towns in the Borderlands of Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine

    Yechiel Weizman, Golgotha in Paradise: Rajgród and the Memory of its Jews

  • 11:00–11:30 Coffee break

• • 11:30–13:00 Post-Jewish Topographies
    Chair: Antony Polonsky
     Aleksandra Szczepan, Tender Geographies and Communities of Memory: Intimate Cartographies of Polish shtetlekh

    Joanna Kabrońska, Post-Jewish Urban Space in Kartuzy/Karthaus, Pomerania

    Clare Fester, Scavenging for Traces in the Post-Jewish Town: A Case Study of Memorial Book Maps

  • 13:00–14:00 Lunch

• • 14:00–15:30 Roundtable – The Dead Remain: Cemeteries in Former Shtetls
    Moderator: Yechiel Weizman
     Krzysztof Bielawski, Monika Tarajko, Aleksandra Janus
  • 15:30–15:50 Szymon Lenarczyk, Archeological Finds
    Moderator: Natalia Romik

• • 15:50–16:20 Coffee break

• 16:20–18:20 Becoming post-Jewish Towns
  Chair: Jeffrey Veidlinger
   Karolina Panz, “Died […] [at the Hands] of True Poles”: How Nowy Targ Became a Non-Jewish Town [cancelled]

  Anna Wylegała, Doctors, Craftsmen, and Shoemakers: The Changing Economy of the Shtetl and its Surroundings During and After World War II

  Mikhail Mitsel, Former Jewish Towns during Late Stalinism in Ukraine

  Tomasz Rakowski, Anthropology of Thrift in the Shtetl

Day 3: Tuesday, September 10

• • 10:00–11:30 The Shtetl: Transnational Perspectives
    Chair: Barbara Tornquist-PlewaKamil Kijek, The Last Polish Shtetl? The Jewish Community of Post-war Dzierżoniów: Continuity/Discontinuity of Jewish Life in Early Post-Holocaust Poland, 1945-1950

    Hune Margulies, Configuration of Space in Contemporary Shtetls in Metropolitan New York: Between Territorial Positioning, Cultural Resistance, and New Ethnicities

    David Assaf and Yael Darr, A Vanished Community and Its Changing Memory: The Case of Nowy Dwόr

  • 11:30–11:50 Jewish Heritage Europe, Natalia Romik in conversation with Ruth Ellen Gruber

• • 11:50–12:20 Coffee break

• 12:20–14:00 Things Left Behind
  Chair: Anna WylegałaMarta Frączkiewicz and Przemysław Kaniecki, Items Left Behind: Post-Jewish Objects in POLIN Museum’s Collection

  Magdalena Waligórska, Prêt-à-priver: Plundered Jewish Clothing in Post-Jewish Towns: A History of Intimate Dispossession

  Marta Duch-Dyngosz, Social Transactions Involving Jewish Property in Post-Jewish Towns: Jewish Agency vs. the Social Order

• 14:00 Closing Remarks: Future Directions

The international conference officially kicks off the project “Digital Stone Witnesses. German-Jewish Sepulchral Culture between the Middle Ages and Modernity – Space, Form, Inscription,”  a major project aimed at documenting the inscription on gravestones in Jewish cemeteries in Germany.

The project  is being carried out by the Salomon Ludwig Steinheim Institute for German-Jewish History at the University of Duisburg-Essen in collaboration with the Professorship of Jewish Studies and the Competence Center for Monument Studies and Monument Technologies at the University of Bamberg and is co-led by Lucia Raspe, Mona Hess and Susanne Talabardon.

PROGRAM:

Sunday, 8 September 2024

Keynote Lecture 
18:00–18:30 Welcome
18:30–19:30 Carsten Wilke (Vienna): Lapidary Exuberance: European Variations on the Baroque Style in Hebrew Inscriptions
19:30–21:00 Reception

Monday, 9 September 2024

Steinerne Zeugen digital: An Introduction
10:00–10:15 Lucia Raspe (Duisburg-Essen): Research Program and Objectives
10:15–10:30 Mona Hess (Bamberg): Digitisation Methods for Jewish Graveyards
10:30–11:00 Nicola Kramp-Seidel (Essen): Introductory Remarks

Material Evidence
11:30–13:00 Tobias Arera-Rütenik (Bamberg): Formal Features of Gravestones and Possibilities of their Analysis
12:15–13:00 Vladimir Levin (Jerusalem): The Phenomenon of Signed Tombstones in Central Europe: Networks and Mental Maps

Recent Developments in Cemetery Documentation
14:30–15:15 Daniel Polakovič (Prague): Returning Names to People. The Documentation of Jewish Cemeteries in the Czech Republic
15:15–16:00 Marcin Wodziński (Wrocław): Researching Jewish Cemeteries in Poland: From Sepulchral Phonebooks to Quantitative Analysis

The German Context
16:30–17:15 Ulrich Knufinke (Hannover/Braunschweig): Jewish Cemeteries in the Focus of Monument Preservation since the Nineteenth Century
17:15–18:00 Christine Magin (Greifswald): The German Epigraphy Project Die Deutschen Inschriften des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit: Objects – Sources – Methods

Tuesday, 10 September 2024

Jewish Sepulchral Culture of the Middle Ages
10:00–10:45 Michael Brocke (Essen): Elites of Different Status: Inscriptions from the Second Half of the Thirteenth Century in Search of their Author
10:45–11:30 Ortal-Paz Saar (Utrecht): Emotions on Medieval Jewish Epitaphs
12:00–12:45 Karin Sczech (Erfurt): The Excavation of the Medieval Jewish Cemetery of Erfurt

Text and Intertext
14:00–14:45 Nathanja Hüttenmeister (Essen): Formula and Freedom: The Walsdorf Cemetery in Comparative Perspective
14:45–15:30 Avriel Bar-Levav (Ra’anana): Tombstone Inscriptions and Jewish Textual Intimacy

Settlement Patterns and Cemetery Network
16:00–16:45 Rotraud Ries (Herford): Organization and Spatial Distribution – Early Modern Jewish Cemeteries in Southern and Northern Germany
16.45–17:30 Christiane Müller (Essen): Cemeteries in the Duchy of Cleves and their Inscriptions: Levels of Belonging

Wednesday, 11 September 2024

Archival Sources
09:30–10:15 Inka Arroyo Antezana (Jerusalem): Theodor Harburger’s Private Collection for Epigraphers (with a Brief Overview of the CAHJP Holdings on Epigraphy)
10:15–11:00 Susanne Talabardon (Bamberg): Labours of a Long Journey. The Chevra Qadisha in Bamberg and their Cemetery Far Away

Jewish Cemeteries and the Larger Historical Picture
11:30–12:15 Rachel Greenblatt (Waltham, Mass.): Cemetery & Synagogue; Women & Men: Prague Gravestones as Historical Source Material
12:15–13:00 Debra Kaplan (Ramat-Gan): Plotting Communal Hierarchies: Records of Jewish Death and Burial in Early Modern Europe
13:00–13:30 Concluding Discussion

Six month “Heritage Season” of Events (Ceremonial, Concerts, Lectures, Meal, Performances, Talks, Tours, and Walks) to mark the 150th Anniversary of Princes Road Synagogue.​ 

Themes: 

September 2024 – People & Place; 

October 2024 – Charity & Philanthropy and Rituals;

November 2024 – Civil life; December 2024 – Education & Learning; 

January 2025 – Trade & Occupations; February 2025 – Art & Culture

The program is evolving.

Click here to see the program as events are confirmed.

NOTE: Tickets for all events must be reserved in advance.

To apply for tickets, please complete the application for tickets form here.

The Stone Research, Conservation, and Restoration Camp is a unique experience that will take place from September 23 to 30, in Țara Făgărașului, Southern Transylnvaina. Together with stone preservation expert  Dr. Sidonia Olea volunteers will work on stone conservation and restoration at the Jewish Cemetery in Făgăraș and in several Christian Orthodox cemeteries in the region. The aim of the Stone Restoration Camp is to form a team dedicated to intervention, rescue, and maintenance of stone monuments and heritage in Tara Fagarasului.

Conserving and restoring funeral monuments is aimed at safeguarding as well as avoiding their loss. Degradation is a phenomenon that cannot be controlled and which in time affects funeral monuments. It is the obligation of restorers to intervene in time to save such monuments from destruction. Often, emergency interventions are needed in graveyards, given the advanced state of degradation of many funeral monuments.

Coordinated by Dr. Olea and heritage activists Dr. Stefan Cibian, this camp is open to all interested in contributing to the conservation and promotion of cultural heritage. The event will take place in person and will offer participants the opportunity to engage in a variety of practical restoration activities and learn from experts in the field.

To attend, register here.

INSTRUCTORS

Dr. Sidonia Olea

Dr. Ștefan Cibian

The conference aims “to foster debate on the strategies applied by the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the field of Jewish cemetery preservation, as well as the research methods used by specialists and examples of the preservation of Jewish cemeteries from the perspective of their signification as cultural heritage of living communities.”

The conference is supported by the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, the Alba Iulia Jewish Community, Bar Ilan University, and Alba County Council, among others.

It is seen as a follow up to several other conferences, including European Jewish Cemeteries: An Interdisciplinary Conference, co-organized by JHE in Vilnius, 2015 and Urban Jewish Heritage: Presence and Absence, Kraków, 2018; as well as published research such as Rudolf Klein’s Metropolitan Jewish Cemeteries of the 19th and 20th Centuries in Central and Eastern Europe: A Comparative Study, 2018; and projects devoted such as those by the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative, initiated in 2015.