Ambivalent Neighbours

This seminar examines the interaction between Poles and Jews from the end of the Second World War up to the present. It focuses on the concrete encounter between the post-war Polish society and the Jewish survivors, as well as on the ways in which the Poles have dealt with the memory of the Jews and their extermination since 1945. Analysing the political, cultural, social and psychological aftermath of the Holocaust in Poland from the Polish and the Jewish perspectives, this seminar will investigate issues such as: inter-ethnic violence, property restitution and collective memory.

Literature: Michael Steinlauf, Bondage to the Dead. Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust, Syracuse 1997; Jan T. Gross, Fear. Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz, New York 2005; Michael Meng, Shattered Spaces. Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland, Cambridge 2011; Erica Lehrer, Jewish Poland Revisited. Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Places, Bloomington 2013.

Participation is limited to 20 people.

Open to mature age students: no