Jews in Polish and German Lands: Encounters, Interactions, Inspirations

Source: Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies

An international conference launching Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 37

Organized by the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies, the UCL Institute of Jewish Studies and the Polin Museum of History of Polish Jews in Warsaw in co-operation with the Embassy of the Republic of Poland and the Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex.

This conference will consist of two online panels in the afternoon, and an evening face-to-face panel at the Embassy of the Republic of Poland, 47 Portland Place, London W1B 1JH.

YOUR REGISTRATION IS FOR THE ONLINE SESSIONS ONLY.

PLEASE EMAIL s.benisaac@ucl.ac.uk IF YOU WOULD LIKE A SEPARATE INVITATION TO THE EVENING IN-PERSON EVENT

The two online panels will be organized chronologically: 1) Polish, German, Jewish Cultural Encounters in War and Peace and 2) The Holocaust and its Aftermath (see programme below). The face-to-face panel will consist of a general introduction to the volume by its editors, followed by a keynote address and reception at the Embassy of the Republic of Poland.

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE VOLUME. Historians have largely tended to regard Polish Jewish history and German Jewish history, from the Middle Ages to the present, as playing out solely within national boundaries, thereby ignoring the interactions that have shaped Jewish cultural life.

Geographical proximity has meant that Jews from both countries have been linked through kinship ties as well as shared economic, cultural, and linguistic realities. The complexity of this relationship and its consequences have been only partially reflected in scholarship.

This volume takes a different approach, shifting the focus away from the nationally distinct to investigate instead mutual influences and interactions. Moving beyond the traditional paradigms that characterize Polish Jewry as ‘authentic’ and German Jewry as ‘modernizing’, it challenges the sharp historiographic division between these two communities and opens up a nuanced understanding of modern European Jewish history. Contributors to the volume will present papers at the conference.

REGISTER FOR THE ONLINE PART OF THE CONFERENCE. It is free of charge and you are welcome to join all or any part of it. Everyone who registers will be sent the zoom link before the event.

Programme (exact timings of presentations to be announced):

12 – 1:45 pm GMT

Welcome

Panel One: Polish, German, Jewish Cultural Encounters in War and Peace

• Delphine BECHTEL (Sorbonne University,Paris): The Jews of Lemberg between the Viennese Kaffeehaus and the Polish Kawiarnia (title to be confirmed)
• Markus NESSELRODT (European University Viadrina, Frankfurt [Oder]): Encounters between Jews and Non-Jews in Prussian Warsaw (1796-1806)
• Sonia GOLLANCE (UCL): Friedrich Schiller in the East European Jewish Imagination

2:00 – 3:45 pm GMT

Panel Two: The Holocaust and its Aftermath

• Joseph CRONIN (Leo Baeck Institute, London/ Birkbeck, University of London): Writing the History of Jews in Germany after 1945
• Michael MENG (Clemson University, South Carolina): Celan and Gradowski’s Poetic Responses to the Holocaust
• Kataryzna PERSON (Warsaw Ghetto Museum): Between us and them there still stands a wall... German-speaking Jews resettled to the Warsaw ghetto in the spring of 1942

6-8 pm GMT

Panel Three : Face to face at the Embassy of the Republic of Poland BY PRIVATE INVITATION ONLY

PLEASE WRITE TO s.benisaac@ucl.ac.uk

• Introduction to the Volume by the editors, François GUESNET (UCL) , Antony POLONSKY (Brandeis), Katrin STEFFEN (University of Sussex)

KEYNOTE LECTURE:

• Anne Christin KLOTZ (Hebrew University of Jerusalem): Jewish Laughter and Jewish Tears: Fascism and Antisemitism in the Joke Pages of the Yiddish Press in 1930s Poland (title to be confirmed)

Drinks and refreshments

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