Warsaw – the History of a Jewish Metropolis
In honour of Antony Polonsky on the occasion of his 70th birthday
Under the patronage of the President of the City of Warsaw, Dr Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz
Venue:
UCL, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT
THE CONFERENCE IS FREE OF CHARGE - NO REGISTRATION REQUIRED
Programme
Please see www.warsawjewishmetropolis.wordpress.com for details of speakers, abstracts of papers and any programme changes.
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
Opening Evening
18.30 Welcome reception (Garden Room, Wilkins Building, UCL)
19.15 Conference opening (Lecture Theatre 1, Cruciform Building, UCL)
Greetings: Mark Geller (IJS), François Guesnet (UCL), Glenn Dynner (Sarah Lawrence College, New York)
Opening Keynote Lecture
Norman Davies: Warsaw - A Multinational Capital City
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
All sessions take place in Lecture Theatre 1, Cruciform Building, UCL
Papers will be 25 minutes each with a response and discussion at the end of each session
9.15 Session 1: The Prehistory and Emergence of a Jewish Metropolis
Session hosted and sponsored by the City of Warsaw
Welcome address and Chair: Małgorzata Naimska (Deputy Director, Department of Culture, City of Warsaw)
Speakers:
Hanna Węgrzynek (Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw): The Jews of Warsaw, 1527-1792
Zofia Borzymińska (Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw): When did the Warsaw Jews begin to represent all Jewish communities in Poland?
Cornelia Aust (University of Pennsylvania): Merchants, Army Suppliers, Bankers: Transregional Connections and the Rise of Warsaw’s Jewish Mercantile Elite (1770-1820)
Respondent: Gershon D. Hundert (McGill University, Montreal)
11.00 Coffee break
11.30 Session 2: Accommodating Cultural Diversity
Chair: Michael Berkowitz (UCL)
Speakers:
Glenn Dynner (Sarah Lawrence College, New York): The Garment of Torah: Clothing Decrees and the Warsaw career of the first Gerer Rebbe
François Guesnet (UCL): From Community to Metropolis: The Jews of Warsaw, 1850-1880
Ela Bauer (Seminar Ha-Kibbutzim College,Tel Aviv/Haifa University): The Editor, the Newspaper and the City: Hayim Zelig Slonimski and the Hatsfira
Respondent: Moshe Rosman (Bar Ilan University)
14.30 Session 3: Creation of a Public Sphere
Chair: Adam Sutcliffe (King's College London)
Speakers:
Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw): Haynt – The Jewish Voice in Your Home
Scott Ury (Hebrew University, Jerusalem): Common Grounds? The Place and Role of Jewish Coffee Houses at the Turn of the Century
Gennady Estraikh (New York University): The Kultur-Lige in Warsaw: A Stopover between Kiev and Paris
Respondent: Jordan Finkin (University of Oxford)
Thursday, 24 June 2010
All sessions take place in Lecture Theatre 1, Cruciform Building, UCL
9.15 Session 4: Negotiating Ethnic Identity
Session sponsored by the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation, New York
Chair: Jan Tomasz Gross (Princeton University)
Speakers:
Robert Blobaum (West Virginia University): A Warsaw Story: Polish-Jewish Relations during the First World War
Kenneth B. Moss (Johns Hopkins University): Negotiating the Nation in Interwar Warsaw
Joanna Beata Michlic (Brandeis University): Telling Intricate Rescue Activities: Letters of Jewish Survivors about Their Rescuers, 1944-1949
Respondent: Szymon Rudnicki (Warsaw University)
11.00 Coffee break
11.30 Session 5: Religious Orthodoxy in Modern Warsaw
Chair: Abigail Green (University of Oxford)
Speakers:
Shaul Stampfer (Hebrew University, Jerusalem): Happy communities are all alike, every unhappy community is unhappy in its own way
Gershon Bacon (Bar Ilan University): Enduring prestige, eroded authority: the Warsaw rabbinate in the interwar period
Havi Dreifuss (Tel Aviv University): “My Handiwork are Drowning in the Sea and You Utter a Song before Me!?" Orthodox Leadership in Warsaw during the Holocaust
Respondent: Israel Bartal (Hebrew University, Jerusalem)
14.30 Session 6: Litvaks and Poles, Warsaw and Vilnius
Chair: Helen Beer (UCL)
Speakers:
Israel Bartal (Hebrew University, Jerusalem): Historiography, Nationalism and Shtadlanut: Shefer and the Revival of East European Jewish Identity (1874-1907)
Motti Zalkin (Ben-Gurion University): What is there, in the Litvak’s Head?
Kalman Weiser (York University, Toronto): The Capital of Yiddishland?
Respondent: Jonathan Karp (Binghamton University, SUNY)
18.30-20.00 Evening event: The Museum of the History of Polish Jews and Its Impact
Chair: François Guesnet (UCL)
Speakers:
Karen Auerbach (University of Southampton): Continuity and Rupture in the Jewish Spaces of Reconstructed, Postwar Warsaw
Kathy Jones (Head of Interpretation, Event Communications, London): The Museum of the History of Polish Jews: communicating 900 years of Polish Jewish presence to local and international audiences
Marcin Wodziński (University of Wrocław): Why historical museums need historians? Warsaw lens
Friday, 25 June 2010
9.15 Session 7: Secular Jewish Culture in Warsaw
Chair: Ada Rapoport-Albert (UCL)
Speakers:
Agnieszka Jagodzińska (University of Wrocław): Image and Identity: Warsaw Jews as Others and Non-Others
Michael Steinlauf (Gratz College): “Paths Which Divert From Yiddishkayt": Y. L. Peretz vs. Hillel Zeitlin in Warsaw, 1911
Natalia Aleksiun (Touro College, New York and IHPAN): From Galicia to Warsaw: Interwar Historians of Polish Jewry
Respondent: Andrea Schatz (King’s College London)
NB This response will include comments on the paper of Natan Cohen (Bar Ilan University): Distributing Knowledge: Warsaw as a Center of Jewish Publishing 1850-1914, who is unable to be present
11.30 Session 8: Destruction
Chair: David Engel (New York University)
Speakers:
Timothy Snyder (Yale University): Armed Resistance in the Wartime Metropolis
Joshua Zimmerman (Yeshiva University, New York): The Polish underground press in Warsaw and the Jews: the Holocaust in the pages of the Home Army’s Biuletyn Informacyjny
14.00 Session 8 (cont’d)
Speakers:
Jürgen Hensel (Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw): Meyer Balaban's death: known documents and new insights
Samuel Kassow (Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut): Rachel Auerbach on the destruction of Warsaw Jewry: wartime and postwar perspectives
Respondent: Jan Tomasz Gross (Princeton University)
15.45 Session 9: Aftermath
Chair: Jonathan Webber (University of Birmingham)
Gabriel Finder (University of Virginia): The Politics of Retribution in Postwar Warsaw: In the Honour Court of the Central Committee of Polish Jews
David Engel (New York University): Warsaw as a Jewish Metropolis? Aborted Reconstruction in the Aftermath of the Holocaust
Marci Shore (Yale University): The Generation of March 1968: Searching for Meaning after Marxism
Respondent: Jan Tomasz Gross (Princeton University)
Closing comments: Antony Polonsky (Brandeis University)
Exhibition (Lecture Theatre 1, Cruciform Building, UCL)
Places of Worship in a Jewish Metropolis: Synagogues in Warsaw
Author: Dr Eleonora Bergman (Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw)
The Conference is organised as part of Polska! Year
Sponsors and Partners:
Embassy of The Republic of Poland
Dr. Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, President of the City of Warsaw
The Wingate Foundation, London
Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Warsaw
Department of Culture, City of Warsaw
Polish Cultural Institute, London
The Lucius N. Littauer Foundation, New York
Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden
Cooperating institutions and sponsors:
Institute for Polish Jewish Studies, London
Institute for Polish Jewish Studies, Boston
Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw
Museum of the History of Polish Jews
The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization