International Conference "The Accidental Metropolis? Jewish Łódź from 1800 to present"

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.

Panorama wojennej Łodzi - z kominów fabryk leci dym.

fot. Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe

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"
Program in PDF →
Accessible version of conference program below
Recordings of the conference are available upon request to anyone interested. Please request the recording at [email protected]
More information: [email protected]

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.

More information about the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the liquidation of Litzmannstadt Ghetto.

Conference program →

Day 1: Sunday, August 25

15:30–17:30 Opening Remarks
Panel 1: Łódź in the Kingdom of Poland
Chair: Aleksandra Jakubczak (POLIN)

Antoni Porayski-Pomsta (Cambridge University)Toward a multicultural history of Bałuty, a suburb of Łódź, c. 1880–1915

Marcin Antczak (Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź) Cultural Impact of the Assassinations of Juliusz Kunitzer and Markus Silberstein

Francois Guesnet (University College London) Of Fish and Philanthropy: Jewish Organizations in the Emerging Jewish Metropolis of Łódź, ca 1850-1900

Małgorzata Mazurek (Columbia University) Łódź industrial civilization and the acculturation of Jewry in the Kingdom of Poland

17:30–18:00 Coffee break

18:00–19:30 Keynote lecture: Natalia Aleksiun (University of Florida) Between Shtetl and Metropolis: Writing Jewish Urban History in East Central Europe

Day 2: Monday, August 26

10:00–11:30 Panel 2: The Interwar Period
Chair: Zachary Mazur (POLIN/IH PAN)

Zofia Trębacz (Jewish Historical Institute) Jewish Łódź through the eyes of "outsiders" in the 1930s

Wojciech Stępień (Warsaw Polytechnic) Jewish Architects from Warsaw Polytechnic and their Mark on the Cityscape of Łódź

Ruthie Kaplan (Haifa University) The Jewish Middle Class of Łódź – A Spatial Approach

11:30–12:00 Coffee break

12:00–13:30 Panel 3: Echoes of the City in Literature
Chair: Maria Antosik-Piela (Uniwersytet Warszawski)

Golda van der Meer (Universidad de Barcelona)Narrating the Łódź ghetto: Chava Rosenfarb and the Yiddish poem

Sonia Gollance (University College London) "Jewish bankers, putting on airs": The Ballroom as a Microcosm of Łódź in I. J. Singer’s The Brothers Ashkenazi

Elizaveta Domnikova (Universität Regensburg), "Baluty" and "Sketches of 1939." Yisroel Rabon’s last prose

13:30–14:30 Lunch

14:30–16:00 Panel 4: Litzmannstadt Ghetto Part I
Chair: Ewa Wiatr (Uniwersytet Łódzki)

Yaron Haim Nir Freisager (Tel-Hai College) Perceptions of death in Łódź and in the Łódź ghetto

Abigail Zola (US Holocaust Memorial Museum) Uncovering Emotional Contamination: Redefining the Process of Site-Specific Architecture

Natalia Soral (Uniwersytet Warszawski) "Who kept Shabbos?" Religion and religious observances in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto

16:00–16:30 Coffee break

16:30–18:00 Panel 5: Litzmannstadt Ghetto Part II
Chair: Adam Sitarek (Uniwersytet Łódzki)

Johannes-Dieter Steinert (University of Wolverhampton) The ghetto, the Zigeunerlager, and the Polen-Jugendverwahrlager

Michał Turski (PAN–Berlin) Animosity or Ambivalence? Volksdeutsche and the Deutsche Volksliste (German People’s List) vs. Jews in Łódź during WWII

Winson Chu (University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee) Jewish Accounts of Interwar Relations with Łódź Germans in the Kriminalpolizei

Day 3: Tuesday, August 27

10:00–11:30 Panel 6: Postwar Narratives
Chair: Natalia Aleksiun (University of Florida)

Ewa Koźmińska-Frejlak (IFiS PAN) Central Jewish Historical Commission on the social map of non-Jewish Łódź (1945-1947)

Monika Stępień (Uniwersytet Jagieloński) Rabbi Zew Wawa Morejno of Łódź and his struggle for leadership of the Jewish community in postwar Poland

Anna Hirsh (Melbourne Holocaust Museum) Melbourne’s Łódź Committee and Community: Beyond Commemoration

11:30–12:00 Coffee break

12:00–13:30 Panel 7: Memory: Past/Present
Chair: Krzysztof Persak (POLIN/ISP PAN)

Daniel Gerson (Universität Bern) Ephemeral visitors or stakeholders of today’s Jewish life? The ambivalent relations of descendants of pre-Holocaust Łódź Jewry to their ancestors’ hometown

Kamil Śmiechowski (Uniwersytet Łódzki) The idea of the "City of Four Cultures Dialogue" as an example of infantilization of the local identity of contemporary Łódź

Joanna Gubała-Czyżewska, Andrzej Czyzewski (ISP PAN) From oblivion to... ? Key Points of Commemoration of the Łódź Ghetto (1945–2015)

Steering committee

Natalia Aleksiun (University of Florida)
François Guesnet (UCL)
Zachary Mazur (POLIN Museum)
Marcos Silber (University of Haifa)
Michał Trębacz (The Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute / University of Łódź)
Ewa Wiatr (University of Łódź)

The conference is organized in honor of Eva and Martin Libitzky.