Looking at the Ghetto… The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Eighty Years in Retrospect - International Conference
17-19 April 2023, Leipzig, Germany
and on livestream
Concept and Organization
Dr. Tom Navon/PD Dr. Jan Gerber/Lukas Böckmann
Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow
Funded by
Alfred Landecker Foundation
In Cooperation with
Beit Lohamei Haghetaot – the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum; the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw; the Haifa Interdiscipli- nary Unit for Polish Studies, University of Haifa; Moreshet – the Mordechai Anielevich Memorial Holocaust Study and Research Center; the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw; and the Professorship of Slavic Literature and Cultural Studies, Leipzig University
Venues
Paulinum – Aula und Universitätskirche St. Pauli, Augustusplatz, Leipzig (17–18 April)
Grassimuseum für Musikinstrumente der Universität Leipzig, Johannisplatz 5-11, Leipzig (18 April, concert)
Salles de Pologne, Hainstraße 16/18, Leipzig (19 April)
Participation and Registration
The conference will take place in English and German, with simultaneous translation being offered.
Registration is recommended. You can also participate digital. You can find the registration form and the link to the live stream on www.dubnow.de.
Topic
The memory of the uprising became controversial almost immediately after its repression by German forces. In 1948, Nathan Rapoport’s memorial was inaugurated on the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto to commemorate the uprising’s fifth anniversary.
When the West German Chancellor Willy Brandt knelt before that monument during his state visit to Poland in December 1970, his gesture aroused agitated debates in Germany and beyond. The legacy of the uprising became a matter of dispute, among Jews and non-Jews alike: between rival political, social, and national groups and in different languages and cultural contexts.
With the greater attention paid to the Holocaust, the memory of the uprising gained a new dynamic. In Israel, alongside the political dispute regarding the role of the right-wing Jewish Military Union in the uprising, a controversy arose over the meaning of heroism, between struggle for survival and active resistance. In Poland, Marek Edelman’s involvement in the Solidarity movement marked the entanglement of the commemorative history of the uprising with contemporary Polish history. Jan Błoński’s 1987 article, “Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto” triggered an emotional debate regarding the role of the Polish population facing the Holocaust, which continues in different forms until today.
This conference will bring together the historical event and its memory. The contradictions relating to the memorial history of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising were born from the complexity of the event itself. Memorial icons will form the episte- mological point of departure for the conference. Their emergence, impact, and transformations in various layers of time will be peeled back. Larger questions of universalism and particularism, nationalization and acculturation, experience and memory will be invoked, concerning the destruc- tion of anthropological certitudes, the transformation of Jewish self-understanding, and the character of the ghetto as a point of transit between life and death.
Program
Monday, 17 April 2023
Venue: Paulinum – Aula und Universitätskirche St. Pauli
1 p.m. Welcome Remarks
Eva Inès Obergfell, Rector of the Leipzig University Yfaat Weiss, Director of the Dubnow Institute
Introduction
Jan Gerber
1.30 – 3 p.m.
Remembering the Uprising
Chair: Andrzej Żbikowski
Greetings: Monika Krawczyk, Director of the Jewish Historical Institute
Agnieszka Haska
History, Politics and Collective Memory: The Ongoing Battle in the Landscape of the Former Warsaw Ghetto
Jan Gerber
Split Guilt: The Memory of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Divided Germany (Lecture in German)
3.30 – 5.30 p.m.
Driving Forces
Chair: Michał Trębacz, Greetings from the Museum of the History of Polish Jews POLIN
Laurence Weinbaum
“They Must Leave an Imprint…”: Unraveling the Convoluted Story of the ŻZW in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Matylda Jonas-Kowalik
“We Share the Same Goal – The Fight and the Resistance:” A New Look on the Communist Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto
Tom Navon
“Socialist Youth Were Still Fighting”: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and Modern Jewish Politics
6 p.m. Keynote Lecture
Chair: Yfaat Weiss
Jan Tomasz Gross
“It’s Nothing. It’s in the Ghetto.” Reflections on the 80th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Tuesday, 18 April 2023
Venue: Paulinum – Aula und Universitätskirche St. Pauli
9 – 11 a.m.
Outlook on the Uprising
Chair: Maren Röger
Luiza Nader
The Witness and the Bystander: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Visual Works of Halina Ołomucka and Mieczysław Wejman
Agnieszka Kajczyk and Anna Duńczyk-Szulc
Anthology of Glances: Warsaw Ghetto and the Uprising in Films and Photographs
Christoph Kreutzmüller and Tal Bruttmann
Shifting Perspective: The Stroop-Report Photos and the Ghetto Fighters
11.30 a.m.–1.30 p.m
Protagonists
Chair: Noam Rachmilevitch, Greetings from the Ghetto Fighters’ House
Avihu Ronen
Women as Leaders: The Role of Women in the Jewish Resistance in Warsaw and Other Ghettos
Maria Ferenc
Making of the Hero: Memory of Mordechai Anielewicz in the First Years after the Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto (1949–1943)
Constance Pâris de Bollardière
A Multi-Directional Contextualization: Marek Edelman’s Recovered Notes on the Warsaw Ghetto
2.30 – 4.30 p.m.
Bearing Witness
Chair: Tanja Zimmermann
Karolina Szymaniak
“Eyes Wide Open, Red from Smoke:” The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the Work of Rachel Auerbach
Rivka Brot
Tzivia Lubetkin: The Private and the Public, The Symbol and the Body
Yehudit Dori Deston
Resistance, Memory and the Law: The Testimonies of Tzivia Lubetkin and Rachel Auerbach at the Eichmann Trial
5 – 6 p.m. Main Lecture, digital
Chair: Elisabeth Gallas
Havi Dreifuss
Disobedience, Escape and Hiding: The Unknown Battle of the Masses
8 p.m. Memorial Concert for the 80th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising by Members of the Leipziger Universitätsorchester
Welcome: Jörg Deventer
Venue: Grassimuseum für Musikinstrumente
Wednesday, 19 April 2023
Venue: Salles de Pologne
9 – 11 a.m.
Wartime Perspectives
Chair: Bernd Karwen
Sebastian Musch
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Bermuda Conference on Refugees: Global Connections of Two Events in April 1943 (Lecture in German)
Noam Leibman
Wartime Memoirs: Jewish Policemen’ Attitudes Toward the Uprising
Noam Rachmilevitch
Wartime Commemoration: The Adolf Berman Collection
11.30 a.m.–1.30 p.m
Interpretation and Commemoration
Chair: Stefan Rohdewald
Stephan Stach
Ber(nard) Mark: Historian of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Lecture in German)
Yechiel Weizman
The Dialectics of Commemoration: Anniversaries of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Communist Poland
Paweł Dobrosielski
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Anniversary Ceremonies 2015–2022 in the Shadows of the Polish Nationalistic Memory Politics: Public Discourse Analysis
2.30 – 4:30 p.m.
The Art of Memory
Chair: Noam Leibman, Greetings from Moreshet
Anna Artwińska
The First Witnesses: Władysław Szlengel’s “What I Read to the Dead” and Jerzy Andrzejwski’s “Holy Week” as Catastrophic Narratives and Social Diagnoses (Lecture in German)
Markus Roth
Staging Resistance: Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto on Stage During the Holocaust and Afterwards (Lecture in German)
Samantha Baskind
“I like my Jews Mean and Fighting:” Leon Uris’ “Mila 18” and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in American Culture
5 – 7 p.m.
Round Table Discussion
Between the Uprising and its Commemoration
Chair: Tom Navon
With Rachel Einwohner, Avinoam Patt, and Daniel Blatman
8 p.m. “Ahead of the Lord God:” Maria Schrader reading Hanna Krall
Chair: Anna Artwińska
followed by a conversation between Anna Artwińska and Barbara Breysach (in German)
Speakers
Prof. Dr. Anna Artwińska, Leipzig University | Prof. Dr. Samantha Baskind, Cleveland State University, OH | Prof. Dr. Daniel Blatman, Hebrew University of Jerusalem/Warsaw Ghetto Museum |PD Dr. Barbara Breysach, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder) | Dr. Rivka Brot, Tel Aviv University | Tal Bruttmann, École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris | Prof. Dr. Jörg Deventer, Dubnow Institute, Leipzig | Dr. Paweł Dobrosielski, Warsaw University | Dr. Yehudit Dori Deston, Hebrew University of Jerusalem | Prof. Dr. Havi Dreifuss, Tel Aviv University/Yad Vashem | Anna Duńczyk- Szulc, Museum of Warsaw | Prof. Dr. Rachel L. Einwohner, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN | Dr. Maria Ferenc, Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw | Dr. Elisabeth Gallas, Dubnow Institute, Leipzig | PD Dr. Jan Gerber, Dubnow Institute, Leipzig | Prof. Dr. Jan Tomasz Gross, Princeton University, NJ | Dr. Agnieszka Haska, The Polish Center for Holocaust Research, Warsaw | Matylda Jonas-Kowalik, Uppsala University | Dr. Agnieszka Kajczyk, Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw | Bernd Karwen, Polish Institute, Leipzig | Dr. Christoph Kreutz- müller, Last Seen. Pictures of Nazi Deportation, Bad Arolsen | Noam Leibman, Moreshet/University of Haifa | Dr. Sebastian Musch, Osnabrück University | Dr. hab. Luiza Nader, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw | Dr. Tom Navon, Dubnow Institute, Leipzig | Dr. Constance Pâris de Bollardière, The American University of Paris | Prof. Dr. Avinoam Patt, University of Connecticut, CT | Noam Rachmilevitch, Ghetto Fighters’ House Archive, Lohamei HaGeta’ot | Prof. Dr. Maren Röger, GWZO, Leipzig | Prof. Dr. Stefan Rohdewald, Leipzig University | Avihu Ronen, University of Haifa/Tel Hai College | Dr. Markus Roth, Fritz Bauer Institute, Frankfurt a.M. | Dr. Stephan Stach, Stiftung Friedliche Revolution, Leipzig | Dr. Karolina Szymaniak, Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw | Dr. Michał Trębacz, Museum of the History of Polish Jews POLIN, Warsaw | Dr. Laurence Weinbaum, Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem | Prof. Dr. Yfaat Weiss, Hebrew University of Jerusalem/Dubnow Institute, Leipzig | Dr. Yechiel Weizman, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan | Prof. Dr. Andrzej Żbikowski, Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw | Prof. Dr. Tanja Zimmermann, Leipzig University
More information
https://www.dubnow.de/en/event/looking-at-the-ghetto-the-warsaw-ghetto-uprising-eighty-years-in-retrospect-1
Contact
Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow, Goldschmidtstraße 28, 04103 Leipzig
+49 341 21 735 50, conference@dubnow.de, www.dubnow.de