International Conference "European Jews Facing the Imminence of the Holocaust"
fot. M. Jaźwiecki / Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich
The conference’s aim is to identify and describe the Jewish experience of life amidst the imminent threat of destruction during the Holocaust. The conference marks the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
- 23-25 April, 2023 (Sunday-Tuesday), POLIN Museum, Warsaw
- 23 April (Sunday), Auditorium
- 24-25 (Monday-Tuesday), conference room A
- Languages of the conference: English and Polish (simultaneous translation)
- Free admission
Organizers:
- POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews
- Polish Center for Holocaust Research, Polish Academy of Sciences
- Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
To watch recordings from the conference please contact: [email protected]
Conference theme >>
In the summer of 1941, Nazi Germany began systematically murdering Europe’s Jews. At first, there were mass executions of civilians in the East, followed by deportations to extermination camps established in occupied Poland. At times, rumors and reports about the mass murders made it clear to the Jews that they were facing a nearly inescapable death sentence. The aim of the conference is to identify and describe Jewish experience of life amidst the imminent threat of destruction. How did information about mass killings spread? How did Jews adapt to extreme conditions? What was their day-to-day life like under these conditions? What were their experiences and emotions and awareness of their further fate?
Although the period of Nazi persecution as a whole was an extreme situation for Jews, we have chosen the most extreme experiences of European Jews during the Shoah as the theme of this conference. We are interested in the experience of extreme situations, such as:
- daily life in the ghettos during German deportation operations,
- the experience of surviving mass execution,
- participation in death marches,
- living in bunkers, hiding places, in forests, and family camps,
- the experience of traveling on deportation transports and escaping from them
- and finally, daily life in German transit camps, labor and concentration camps, and death camps, including work in the Sonderkommando.
The Conference will take place around the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It will be complimented by the exhibition "Around Us a Sea of Fire" at the POLIN Museum, which is dedicated to the civilian experience during the Uprising in April 1943.
Conference program >>
23 April 2023 (Sunday)
- 4.00-4.15 PM – Opening Remarks
- 4.15-5.45 PM – Panel 1: On Both Sides of the Wall: Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto and Beyond
Chair: Jan Gerber Avihu Ronen – ŻOB in Warsaw as a Central Headquarters of Jewish Fighting Organizations in the Ghettoes
Tom Navon – Return to the Ghetto: Polish Communists or Jewish Fighters
Carolyn Piorun – "It is no longer only a Jewish sorrow." The Yiddish PEN Club in London Responding to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
- 5.45-6.15 PM – Coffee break
- 6.15-7.45 PM – Keynote lecture: Barbara Engelking – A Different Kind of Courage: Jewish Civilians in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
24 April 2023 (Monday)
- 10.00 AM-12.00 PM - Panel 2: Ghettos I
Chair: Michał Trębacz
Anna Hajkova – Theresienstadt and the Society of the Holocaust Victims
Maria Ferenc – "Everyone asks what will become of us." Inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto in the Face of the News about the Holocaust
Adam Sitarek – "To our great misfortune, we already know everything...". Knowledge about the Activity of the Extermination Camp in Chełmno and Reactions to It in the Ghettos in Warthegau
- Ewa Wiatr – "A rumour spread through the ghetto like lightning about the imminent deportation of the entire population". Deportations from the Lodz Ghetto in 1942: Preparation, Execution, and Reactions
- 12.00-12.30 PM – Coffee break
- 12.30-2.30 PM – Panel 3: Ghettos II
Chair: Natalia Aleksiun
Leonid Gershovich – Uprisings in the Small Ghettos: Popular Jewish Activism in the Face of the Holocaust
Daina Eglitis – Women’s Experiences of "Life Force Atrocities" in the Baltic Ghettos, 1941-1943
Nadja Weck – Daily Life in Sambor’s Ghetto Blich during German Deportation Operations. Local Non-Jewish Inhabitants: Between Collaboration with German Occupants and Aiding their Jewish Neighbours
Natalia Ivchyk – (Un)children's Voices of the Lityn Ghetto
- 2.30-3.30 PM – Lunch break
- 3.30-5.00 PM – Panel 4: In Hiding
Chair: Barbara Engelking
Radosav Tucović – Three and a Half Years in a Shelter: The Case of Hiding Marko Anaf in Occupied Belgrade (1941–1944)
Michał Grochowski – The Third Way: Bunkers in the Warsaw Ghetto
Natalia Aleksiun – "I went into a nervous shock and began talking nonsense." Jewish Accounts of Mental Breakdown in the Face of Mortal Danger
- 5.00-5.30 PM – Coffee break
- 5.30-7.00 PM – Panel 5: In Occupied Europe
Chair: Krzysztof Persak
Dorota Choińska – "They would rather die than return to France..." Polish Jews from France escaping the Shoah to Spain
Stefania Zezza – "Meanwhile, the Jews feel the storm arriving." The Jews from Salonika Facing the Holocaust
Laurien Vastenhout – Fate Unknown? How the Dutch and Belgian Jewish Councils Sought Information about the fate of the Jews in "the East"
- 7.00 PM – Dinner for panelists and invited guests
25 April 2023 (Tuesday)
- 10.00 AM-12.00 PM – Panel 6: Concentration camps
Chair: Agnieszka Haska
Katarína Ristveyová, Lucia Sotáková – Survival Strategies: Jewish Men's, Women's and Children's Experiences in Sered’ Concentration Camp
Alexandra Natoli – The "Privilege" of Cleaning Excrement: Memories of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Scheisskommando
Marta Zawodna-Stephan – Women in the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in the Last Period of its Operation
Agata Stępnik – "This is such an embarrassing topic that it became the reason for the conspiracy of silence." The Issue of the Physiology of Female Prisoners of KL Auschwitz-Birkenau in the Works of Batsheva Dagan and Liana Millu
- 12.00-12.30 PM – Coffee break
- 12.30-2.00 PM – Panel 7: Death Marches
Chair: Andrzej Żbikowski
Claudia Vollmer – Massacre on the Baltic: The Palmnicken Death March
Ruth Leiserowitz – The Moment of Rapid Decision. Private Management in Times of Chaos and Highest Danger
Daniel Blatman – "It seemed as if the dead had risen from his grave and start walking." Describing the Indescribable: The death marches experience in post war testimonies
- 2.00-3.00 PM – Lunch break
- 3.00-4.30 PM – Panel 8: Individual Trajectories
Chair: Daniel Newman
Nurit Grossman – Amidst the Spheres of Ghettos and Camps Between Poland and Germany – One Woman's Story of Survival
Alexandra Pulvermacher – A Story of Survival: Tosia and Marcel Reich-Ranicki
Klaas Smelik - Etty Hillesum's Letters about the Transit camp Westerbork (Netherlands) as a Witness of Spiritual Resistance
- 4.30 PM – Conference closure
Steering Committee >>
- Suzanne Brown-Fleming (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum),
- Barbara Engelking (Polish Center for Holocaust Research),
- Agnieszka Haska (Polish Center for Holocaust Research),
- Tom Navon (Simon Dubnow Institut, Leipzig),
- Daniel Newman (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum),
- Krzysztof Persak (POLIN Museum),
- Michał Trębacz (POLIN Museum).
Partner:
