Knowledge Under Siege: New Scholarship from Poland
This series of YIVO programs presents a new Polish school of research into the Holocaust and antisemitism informed by critical theory and cultural critique. Initiated by Jan Tomasz Gross’s book, Neighbors (2000), this new school proposes a new frame of analysis of the Polish share of responsibility for the destruction of Polish Jewry. It revisits the endeavor of khurbn forshung conducted in Poland by Holocaust survivor scholars. First impeded then destroyed by Polish bottom-up and top-down antisemitism, this postwar effort reappears as a reference point and an object of critical analysis as well.
Research into the material facts and cultural representations (imagery, narratives, ideas) of mainstream Polish Holocaust discourse reveals how much the facts were produced by the representations and stemmed from sources that have been neither deconstructed nor deactivated. A meticulous reconstruction of the historical process, its mechanisms and stakes, causes and effects, allows for a more complete grounding of Jewish social and cultural history. Providing context to the events and situating them within a sociocultural continuum – between their eve and aftermath – also enables a sharper understanding of the present: the legal repression of Holocaust scholars, the co-optation of existing institutions, the creation of new institutions, and the mobilization of distortion and propaganda to fight against the results of historical research and through this effort to deny the Polish realities of the Holocaust.
Programs
The Dancer and the Holocaust: A Biography of Pola Nireńska
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2022 | 1:00pm ET | On Zoom
Weronika Kostyrko, Tancerka i Zagłada. Historia Poli Nireńskiej [The dancer and the Holocaust. The history of Pola Nireńska], (Warsaw: Czerwone i Czarne, 2019)
Breaking the Frame: New School of Polish-Jewish Studies
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023 | 1:00pm ET | On Zoom
Breaking the Frame. New School of Polish-Jewish Studies, edited by Irena Grudzińska Gross, Konrad Matyjaszek, introduced by Jan T. Gross (Berlin: Peter Lang Verlag, 2022).
Irena Sendler: In Hiding
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15, 2023 | 1:00pm ET | On Zoom
Anna Bikont, Sendlerowa. W ukryciu [Irena Sendler. In hiding] (Wołowiec: Czarne, 2017).
The Guardians of Fate
TUESDAY, APRIL 11, 2023 | 1:00pm ET | On Zoom
Bożena Keff, Strażnicy fatum [The guardians of fate] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej, 2020).
Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in German Occupied Poland
WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 2023 | 1:00pm ET | On Zoom
Night Without End. The Fate of Jews in German Occupied Poland, edited by Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2022).
Philo-Semitic Violence: Poland’s Jewish Past in New Polish Narratives
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 2023 | 1:00pm ET | On Zoom
Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski, Philo-Semitic Violence. Poland’s Jewish past in new Polish narratives (Landham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021).