Holocaust Commemoration in Poland today

In the past two decades, there has been a new direction in Holocaust commemoration in Poland.

The shift started with Jan Tomasz Gross' book Neighbors (2000) on the pogrom in Jedwabne. Since then, Jewish history became institutionalised at the permanent exhibition at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews (opened 2014) and Polish filmmaker Paweł Pawlikowski received an Academy Award for Ida (2013).

In this talk, speaker Dr Tomasz Łysak (University of Warsaw) asks ‘What is the place of Jewish history in Polish commemoration of World War II now?’.

Dr Tomasz Łysak (dr. hab., University of Warsaw) works principally on representations of the Holocaust in relation to trauma studies and psychoanalysis. He has been awarded a research grant from the National Science Centre entitled From Newsreel to Post-Traumatic Film: Documentary and Artistic Films on the Holocaust (2013-2015). He has edited Antologia studiów nad traumą [Trauma studies anthology] (Kraków 2015) and is the author of Od kroniki do filmu posttraumatycznego – filmy dokumentalne o Zagładzie [From Chronicle to Post-Traumatic Film: Documentary Films about the Holocaust] (Warsaw 2016) which was recognised as the best debut book in cinema and film studies by the Polish Association for Studies of Film and the Media.

This talk is hosted by the Centre for Jewish Studies. It is free to attend and all are welcome.

Image: The Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in World War II in Markowa, Poland. Photo credit: Tomasz Łysak.