EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2021/22

Report

Returning Galician Jews from Oblivion: 100th Anniversary of Jakub Honigsman

Lviv, March 29–30, 2023

A two-day international conference organised and hosted by the Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies (UAJS), in cooperation with the Center for Urban History of East-Central Europe, sponsored by the European Association for Jewish Studies (EAJS) Conference Grant Programme in European Jewish Studies.

Applicants: Dr. Serhiy Hirik, Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies, Ukraine; Prof. Wacław Wierzbieniec, University of Rzeszów, Poland.

Organisers: Dr. Serhiy Hirik, Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies, Ukraine; Dr. Vitaly Chernoivanenko, Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies, Ukraine.

Author of Report: Serhiy Hirik.

Event Rationale

This conference was of significant importance both for the scholarly community and wider society. It was important for organisers to remind people of the role played by those scholars who tried to work on topics related to the history of Ukrainian Jews in Soviet Ukraine.

During the second half of the 20th century, such historians as Jakub Honigsman worked on the research problems that were restricted by the Soviet power. Prof. Honigsman tried to find, and did find, ways to publish his works outside the USSR (especially in Poland, where the Jewish Historical Institute still existed) and wrote some of his works “not for publication.” Thanks to such scholars, the history of Galician Jews was not forgotten.

Such scholars as Jakub Honigsman played the key role in preserving the memory of the victims of the Holocaust in Ukraine. For a long time, this topic was forbidden to researchers. Honigsman lost his own family in Lublin during the Holocaust. He saw the traces of Galician Jews in the cities where he lived after the Second World War (Kyiv, Lviv, and Ternopil) and felt that the history of the Jewish community must not disappear. He has done everything he could to keep its memory alive.

In the 1990s, the history of Galician Jews became the “legal” topic. But it was not popular. The Ukrainian historiography of the 1990s and early 2000s was significantly ethnic-centered. The history of Galician Jewry was of interest first of all to the Galician Jews and their ancestors. Jakub Honigsman was one of the few Ukrainian-Jewish researchers who studied such topics previously and continued to do so after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, he published several books on the history of Galician Jews and on the Holocaust in Eastern Galicia, Bukovina, and Transcarpathia. His works brought these topics into public discourse. Even more, he made the history and culture of Galician Jewry an essential part of the history of Eastern Galicia. Thanks to him and other historians who worked on these topics in the 1990s and early 2000s, a non-Jewish audience noticed the importance of the Jewish aspects of their region.

In the late 2000s, a new generation of Ukrainian historians started to work on the history of Galician Jews. The Ukrainian historiography changed. It became much more inclusive. Since then, Jewish topics have become of interest to a broader audience of scholars interested in the history of this region. Jakub Honigsman played a significant role in these changes.

The list of topics that are being developed has also changed. In the 1990s, researchers worked mostly on the economic and political aspects of the history of Galician Jewry. In the 2000s, the scholars payed attention to numerous issues of their cultural and religious life, gender problems, etc.

The purpose of the conference was to organise a scholarly conversation among Ukrainian and foreign scholars on the history of Galician Jewry as an integral part of the history of Galicia, and the Galician Jews’ cultural, political and social life. The organisers also aimed to promote debate on the role played by Jakub Honigsman in preserving the Galician Jews’ memory and the importance of his works for the development of the historiography of the history of Galicia. These goals were achieved. A fruitful discussion was organised between researchers from five countries (Ukraine, the UK, Israel, Poland, and Switzerland) who research various topics on the history of Galician Jewry.

Sections and papers presented during the event and significant and productive threads

The conference was hosted at the Center for Urban History of East-Central Europe in Lviv. The conference convened a group of researchers from Ukraine, the UK, Israel, Poland, and Switzerland (both in-person and online).

The security issues were among the highest priorities for the organisers and their partners. Therefore, this wartime event was held in the Center’s basement (exhibition hall before the Russian full-scale invasion), which served as a shelter for the participants in case of missile and drone attacks.

The conference was opened with the opening words by Dr. Vitaly Chernoivanenko, president of the Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies, Maryana Mazurak, deputy director of the Center for Urban History, and Viktoriia Venediktova, Jakub Honigsman’s daughter. Vitaly Chernoivanenko also read greetings from the EAJS president Prof. Elisabeth Hollender.

After the opening words, Dr. Taissa Sydorchuk (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy) delivered the first keynote lecture, “Jakub Honigsman: Contributions to a Portrait of a Historian of Galician Jewry.”

The first panel (moderated by Vitaly Chernoivanenko, Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, UAJS President; all the participants of this panel participated in the conference online) was opened with a paper, Jakub Honigsman and the Fate of Jewish Cultural Assets in Western Ukraine, presented by Dr Eva Frojmovic (University of Leeds, UK). She developed the topic of the destruction of Jewish cultural assets in Lviv and Lviv region that was only briefly commented by Honigsman. Next Refael Kroizer (Tel Aviv University) gave a presentation Lviv and the District: Between the Jews of the City and the Jews of the Village, the Struggle over Jewish Slaughtering. The following discussion focused on the possible influences from the Western Europe on the policy of Lviv community concerning slaughtering in the Lviv district, price difference for kosher supervising and slaughterers’ work, and the connection between slaughterers’ price and taxation status of Jewish communities in Lviv and Lviv district. The last paper in this panel, What is Known About More than 200 Years of Hasidic History of Otynia?, focused on the history of one of the Galician Hasidic communities. It was given by Dr. Tamara Kutsaeva of the Museum of the History of Ukraine in Kyiv. The following discussion focused on the sources used by the presenter and sources which can be used by her later.

The second panel (moderated by Taissa Sydorchuk, National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy; this panel was held in person). It was opened with a presentation by Prof. Eugeny Kotlyar (Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Fine Arts, Ukraine) Synagogue Wall Painting of Eastern Galicia: An Attempt to Reconstruct Local Tradition. He described and showed several examples of Galician synagogue wall painting (partly documented by himself), ways of its reconstruction and differences between wall painting in wooden and stone synagogues. The following discussion focused on interpretations of symbols used by painters, influences of other traditions on Galician wall painting. The second talk was given by Prof. Yuriy Biryulov (Lviv National Academy of Arts, Ukraine). Its topic was Zygmunt Sperber (1886–1942) as a Lviv Architect, Designer, and Graphic Artist. It was devoted to works by famous Lviv Jewish architect Zygmunt Sperber who died in Lviv Ghetto. The discussion related to Sperber’s published works on architecture and art theory. The last paper in this panel was given by Nataliya Levkovych (Lviv National Academy of Arts, Ukraine). Its topic was Sasiv Center of Jewish Lacemaking in the Second Half of the 19th and the First Decades of the 20th Century: The Forgotten World. The following discussion focused on the technologies used by lace-makers in Sasiv and possible foreign influences on them.

The second day of the conference was opened with a second keynote lecture, How to Quote an Enemy?: “Philosophers” in Galician Jewish Literature. It was given by Dr. Kateryna Malakhova of H. Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Open University of Israel. She focused on the features of the use of secular philosophical works by Galician Hasidic thinkers of the 18th and 19th centuries. The following discussion was related to the problem of use of modern natural scientific works by Hasidic scholars and the use of modern philosophy in Hasidic literature in the 20th century.

The third panel was moderated by Dr. Serhiy Hirik. Two of the participants gave their talks online and one in person. The first presentation, Safe Space? The Role of Instruction in Jewish Religion in Galician Public Schools, was given by Dr. Alicja Maślak-Maciejewska of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. It was focused on the textbooks used by the teachers of Judaism in Galicia in the late 19th and early 20th century and the place of the lessons of Judaism in the school curriculum in general. The following discussion related to the role of the lectures of Judaism for the Jewish community in general and Jewish children in particular. The second presentation was given by Dr. Małgorzata Śliż-Marciniec (Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music and Jagellonian University in Kraków). Its topic was Who Taught Jewish Religion in Galicia? Teachers of Jewish Religion on the Eve of the First World War. She was focused on the personal biographies of Judaism lecturers in Galician schools on the eve of the First World War. The last presentation by Dr. Mariia Vovchko, The Education and Origin of the Rabbis in Lviv’s Jewish Community (Second Half of the 19th Century to 1939). She described the localities where the Lviv rabbies were born and the educational institutions from which they graduated. The following discussion was focused on the cases of misuse of the rabbi title by those who did not have right to use it.

The fourth panel was moderated by Vitaly Chernoivanenko. The topic of the first presentation was Jakub Honigsman as a Researcher of the Holocaust in Galicia. It was given by Serhiy Hirik. Researcher focused on the works on the Holocaust by Jakub Honigsman. He described the features of Honigsman’s books on the Holocaust, topics that were investigated by Honigsman, sources used by him, and topics that were less deeply explored by this author. The following discussion related to the methods used by Jakub Honigsman. The second presentation was given by Marta Havryshko of the Basel University. Its topic was Anti-Jewish Violence in Galicia in the Summer of 1941: Gendered Aspects. The following discussion focused on the ways through which Nazi antisemitic propaganda was spread among the Galician non-Jewish population before 1941 and the field researches in the localities where pogroms occurred in summer 1941.

The conference was concluded by the seminar Prospects for the Study of Galician Jewry. The participants, Vitaly Chernoivanenko, Serhiy Hirik, Taissa Sydorchuk, Eugeny Kotlyar, and Mariia Vovchko expressed their opinions on the further development of the history of Galician Jewry. It was closed by the words of Honigsman’s daughter Viktoriia Venediktova.

 Changes to the Original Programme

There was one major change to the original programme. Prof. Wacław Wierzbieniec (Rzeszów, Poland), one of the conference applicants and keynote speakers, was unable to attend the event or to participate online due to illness.

Event programme (Sections and Papers)

https://uajs.org.ua/sites/default/files/Program-UAJS_Returning_Galician_2023.pdf

Planned Outcomes

The conference contributed to the development of working relationships between Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian researchers on the history of Galician Jews. Its participants discussed possible topics for further research projects (especially on the history of Jewish art in Galicia and on the history of the Holocaust in Galicia).

A detailed description of the event will be published in the “Chronicle” section of the Judaica Ukrainica journal as well as on the website historians.in.ua. Several participants announced that they will submit their papers for the special section of the next volume of Judaica Ukrainica.

All the presentations were filmed and will be published on the UAJS YouTube Channel.

Publicity

UAJS website:

https://uajs.org.ua/en/news/registration-uajs-conferences-march-27-30-2023-now-open

https://uajs.org.ua/uk/news/reestraciya-gostey-na-naukovi-konferencii-uayu-lviv-27-30-bereznya-2023

https://uajs.org.ua/en/news/call-papers-returning-galician-jews-oblivion-100th-anniversary-jakub-honigsman

https://uajs.org.ua/uk/news/ogoloshennya-pro-konferenciyu-povertayuchi-skhidnogalicke-evreystvo-iz-zabuttya-do-storichchya

Center for Urban History of East Central Europe website:

https://www.lvivcenter.org/en/conferences/jakub-honigsman-2/

https://www.lvivcenter.org/conferences/jakub-honigsman/

The Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies website:

https://www.holocaust.kiev.ua/other/details/pov_shevr_evr_2022?objId=1

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.6345741662115798&type=3

YouTube: All the presentations were filmed and will be published on the UAJS YouTube channel.

Feedback from two participants

Kateryna Malakhova: I was very pleased to participate in this conference. The Jewish history and literature of Galicia still has a lot of aspects unknown to us. The contribution of Ukrainian scientists to its research is gradually growing. It is very important that this work does not stop even during the war; to be able to continue the research in cooperation with an international academic community is a great support for us. Many participants presented interesting and promising results, which I was pleased to hear.

Taissa Sydorchuk: First of all, I would like to appreciate the very idea to organise a conference dedicated to Jakub Honigsman precisely in Lviv. The researcher lived most of his life in this city. In addition, I wish to acknowledge the efforts of the organisers to hold the conference in the conditions of the Russo-Ukrainian war with repeating air alerts. The long-term cooperation of the UAJS with the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv provided not only the safe venue, but also high-quality technical support for the conference.

 

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2022/23

Report

Symposium: Commemorating the “Night of the Murdered Poets”: History and Afterlife

Jewish Museum Berlin

August 14, 2022

Organizers:    Jewish Museum Berlin; Miriam Chorley-Schulz (University of Toronto); Tal Hever-Chybowski (Maison de la culture yiddish – Medem bibliothèque)

Event Rationale

The 12 August 2022 marked the 70th anniversary of the so-called “Night of Murdered Poets,” the climax of the Stalinist persecution of Jewish intellectuals. The murder of Dovid Bergelson, Peretz Markish, Itsik Fefer, Dovid Hofshteyn, Leyb Kvitko and others meant the death of the most important Soviet Yiddish literary figures. At the behest of the Soviet government, they founded the Jewish Antifascist Committee in 1942. When the committee was dissolved by the Stalinist regime in 1948, its members were persecuted, arrested, and in some cases murdered after a secret trial in 1952 on charges of treason, bourgeois nationalism, and anti-Soviet activities.

The one-day symposium of the Jewish Museum Berlin and the “Summer Program for Yiddish Language and Literature” organized by Maison de la culture yiddish – Medem bibliothèque was dedicated to these poets and the Yiddish culture they created and represented both inside and outside the Soviet Union. It revisited the “Night of the Murdered Poets” as both a historical and memorial event and tested new ways of understanding it beyond Cold War dogmatism for a broad Berlin audience in two consecutive panels. Five renowned scholars of Soviet-Jewish culture and history coming from Germany, the US, and Canada drew on their latest research to tackle the following central research questions amongst others:

• How did it come to the events of 12 August 1952?
• What do we know about the history of commemorating this event both inside the Soviet Union and in the West?
• What does the name “Night of the Murdered Poets” signify?
• What were its legacies in research on Soviet Yiddish culture during the Cold War and up until today?
• What are the literary legacies of the murdered writers?

Section Overview

The first panel “The Night of the Murdered Poets – History and Legacies” included (1) newest scholarship on the successes, tragedies and legacies of the Jewish Antifascist Committee and (2) the creation of the “Night of the Murdered Poets” and the memorial culture surrounding it during the Cold War.

Gennady Estraikh gave the keynote and provided a comprehensive history of the Jewish Antifascist Committee from 1941 to 1952. He is a clinical professor at NYU for Soviet Yiddish culture and history and the director of the Shivdler Project A Comprehensive History of the Jews of the Soviet Union. As the foremost expert on the Jewish Antifascist Committee, he provided cutting-edge scholarship on the creation and workings of the committee as well as on its demise and brutal dissolution. The keynote address was followed by Dr. Miriam Chorley-Schulz (neé Schulz), the Ray D. Wolfe Postdoctoral Fellow at the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies and the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. Dr. Chorley-Schulz works on Soviet Yiddish culture, antifascism and Holocaust memory as well as the “Jewish Cold War.” She addressed the memory of August 12, 1952 up until “The Night of the Murdered Poets” was created as an annual memorial day as part of the burgeoning Soviet Jewry Movement in the United States in early 1970s and how this memory culture rewrote Soviet Jewish history to serve political purposes during the Cold War.

In the discussion part, Estraikh and Chorley-Schulz discussed the memory of August 12, 1952 in the Soviet Union itself and dug deeper into the legacies of the Jewish Antifascist Committee – much of which has been so far overlooked because of the historiography that centers on its demise. Indeed, August 12, 1952 was a decisive break within the history of Soviet Yiddish culture that Soviet-Yiddish speakers and cultural producers hardly ever recovered from. It also changed everything for the telling of Soviet Yiddish culture in Western historiography. With the wounds of the Jewish catastrophe under Nazism so fresh, the budding totalitarian paradigm suggested that Stalin’s assault was nothing less than a ‘second Holocaust.’ The combination of Stalin’s crimes with dogmatic anti-communism in the West had an impact on the writing of history of such proportions that it set in motion a process, per David Shneer, that made a reading of Soviet Yiddish culture any other than backwards from the purges a matter of utter impossibility: suggesting instead an unavoidable teleology of the romance between Jewishness and communism. They also foreclosed any non-imperialist understanding of Soviet Yiddish culture and perpetuated the idea that this culture indeed ended in 1952 – in a way giving Stalin a posthumous victory. Estraikh and Chorley-Schulz came up with ideas for an alternative memory culture – as exhibited through the symposium itself.

During the second panel, the audience encountered newest scholarship into Soviet Yiddish culture and the Jewish Antifascist Committee conducted within the joint interdisciplinary project “The Short Life of Soviet Yiddish Literature” by the Leibniz Institut für jüdische Geschichte und Kultur – Simon Dubnow, Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung in Berlin and the Professorship for Slavic Jewish Studies at the University of Regensburg. This cooperative project takes the “Night of the Murdered Poets” as the point of departure and researches Yiddish literature and culture in the Soviet Union between 1917 and the 1970s. During the symposium, affiliated scholars Professor Dr. Sabine Koller (University of Regensburg), Dr. Alexandra Polyan (University of Regensburg), and Jakob Stürmann (Leibniz Institut für jüdische Geschichte und Kultur – Simon Dubnow) presented and discussed their research.

Prof. Dr. Koller presented a new edition of selected works of Dovid Bergelson in German translation. Bergelson is one of the most famous Soviet Yiddish writers that were murdered on August 12, 1952. As part of the interdisciplinary project “The Short Life of Soviet Yiddish Literature,” Koller is working on German translations of selected works of Bergelson’s entire lifespan. So far, if at all, Bergelson scholarship usually focuses on and celebrates his pre-Soviet period. Koller intervenes by presenting his oeuvre as a whole. Dr. Alexandra Polyan presented on the wartime writings of Peretz Markish, another famed Soviet Yiddish writer who was murdered in August 1952. She specifically compared different Holocaust plays Markish wrote during the 1940s as the gruesome events of the Holocaust were still unfolding. A specific focus was the treatment of Germans within the plays and how it evolved over time. Finally, Jakob Stürmann revisited the fateful North America tour of Shloyme Mikhoels and Itsik Fefer, two representatives of the Jewish Antifascist Committee that made up the Soviet Yiddish delegation. He zoomed in on the conditions that made this tour possible in the year 1943 and its immediate and later tragic outcome.

The Q&A focused on the ways in which the trial and assassination of 1952 continues to hold a sway over the individual research into Soviet Yiddish culture explored against the backdrop of revolution, civil war, and emigration, as well as the experience of Stalinism and the Holocaust as well as the new insights that are being gained in defiance of well-established narratives.

Output

The one-day symposium on August 14, 2022 looked at the role August 12, 1952 has played and continues to play in shaping narratives about Soviet Yiddish literature and culture. It was not merely a day of mourning. Rather the symposium was a celebration of Soviet Yiddish culture despite the history of violence it endured and suggested ways in which to commemorate this event in new and innovative ways to a broad Berlin public. To revisit the Stalinist regime, the early days of the Cold War, and the question of Jewish vulnerability is of special importance at a moment that witnesses nothing less than a new/old Cold War in the face of Russia’s war on Ukraine. The audience left the Jewish Museum Berlin with both a new understanding of the events leading up to and following the “Night of the Murdered Poets” and of Soviet Yiddish culture itself. The symposium itself is available online in the form of video recordings in Yiddish, English, and German on the Jewish Museum Berlin website: https://www.jmberlin.de/en/symposium-night-of-murdered-poets

Final Program

Panel 1, 14-16:30, The Night of the Murdered Poets – History and Legacies (in English)

• Keynote: Gennady Estraikh (NYU, professor of Soviet Yiddish culture and history, director of the Shivdler Project A Comprehensive History of the Jews of the Soviet Union) spoke about the successes, legacies and tragedy of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, 1941–1952.
• Miriam Chorley-Schulz (Ray D. Wolfe Postdoctoral Fellow 2021-23, Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies | Centre for Diaspora & Transnational Studies, University of Toronto, was Research Assistant for the Shivdler project A Comprehensive History of the Jews of the Soviet Union) spoke about the memorialization of the trial/assassination during the Cold War, the creation of the “Night of the Murdered Poets” and the birth of the Soviet Marrano, 1952–2022.
• Followed by a conversation between Estraikh and Chorley-Schulz about the meanings and legacies in East and West until today.
• Q&A

Panel 2, 16:30-18:00, The interdisciplinary cooperation project “The Short Life of Soviet Yiddish Literature” and the “Night of the Murdered Poets” (in German)

• Sabine Koller (Professor of Slavic-Jewish Studies, University of Regensburg, researcher in charge of the interdisciplinary cooperation project “The Short Life of Soviet Yiddish Literature”) presented a new edition of translations of Dovid Bergelson’s work into German.
• Alexandra Polyan (University of Regensburg, postdoctoral fellow of the interdisciplinary cooperation project “The Short Life of Soviet Yiddish Literature”) presented on Peretz Markish’s Holocaust plays of the 1940s
• Jakob Stürmann (Dubnow-Institut, postdoctoral fellow of the project “The Short Life of Soviet Yiddish Literature”) – revisited the North America tour of the delegation of the Jewish Antifascist Committee in the fateful year 1943
• Q&A

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2021/22

Report

UAJS Conference 2022

Jews of East-Central Europe after the Catastrophe: Multiplicity of Experiences, 1945–1956

Author of Report: Serhiy Hirik

A two-day international conference organised and hosted by the Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies, in cooperation with the Center for Urban History of East-Central Europe, sponsored by the European Association for Jewish Studies (EAJS) Conference Grant Programme in European Jewish Studies (Lviv, March 27–28, 2023)

Applicants: 

Dr. Serhiy Hirik, Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies, Ukraine;

Prof. Frank Grüner, University of Bielefeld, Germany;

Prof. Andrea Pető, Central European University, Vienna, Austria.

Organisers:

Dr. Serhiy Hirik, Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies, Ukraine;

Dr. Vitaly Chernoivanenko, Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies, Ukraine.

Event Rationale

The conference was of significant importance both for the scholarly community and wider society. The history of East-European Jews after the Second World War frequently is overshadowed by their tragic fate during the Holocaust. Marginalization of the Jewish organised life in East bloc states after the war in mass was much more complex phenomena than only a direct consequence of the Shoah.

During the first decade after the Second World War the East-Central European Jews have experienced a series of dramatic events. For instance, an organised Jewish life in cultural, social, religious, and political spheres was partly revived in Poland in the late 1940s. The local non-Jewish population, however, was not satisfied by this process and especially by Jews’ attempts to return their property. Antisemitic accidents “from below” were not uncommon (the widely known pogrom Kielce pogrom was the bloodiest such episode, but not the only one), so the short revival of Jewish life was shortly interrupted. During next two years two third of holocaust survivors have left Poland, mostly for Eretz Israel. The Jewish political life also ceased, since Zionist activists made Aliyah and members of Jewish non-Zionist parties liquidated their political groups (e.g., many Bundists under pressure from the ruling party became its members in 1948-1949, as a result in 1949 Bund was dissolved). Despite this, the Polish Jews preserved their own representative body (the Central Committee of Polish Jews) until 1950. This organization was significantly independent from the state power. The liquidation of this body in 1950 and the creation of fully controlled by state Jewish Social and Cultural Society in Poland was an expression of final decline of Jewish life.

Similar process had place in the USSR, i.e. the antisemitic actions “from below” (e.g. pogrom in Kyiv in 1945, the last Jewish pogrom in Ukraine) and actions “from above”, i.e. the antisemitic campaign of the late 1940-s and early 1950-s: the liquidation of the Jewish Antifascist Committee in 1948, the liquidation of the Cabinet of Jewish Culture Studies at the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in 1949 (the last such academic institution in the Soviet Union), liquidation of Jewish theaters (1949), and physical liquidation of Jewish cultural elite in 1952.

Short-time revival of Jewish life and its interruption caused by antisemitic actions both “from below” and “from above” as well as by Jewish emigration also took place in other East bloc states. Sure, this process had much smaller scale in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and East Germany than in Poland and the USSR due to much smaller number of Jews who survived the Holocaust. But it makes the cases of these countries even more interesting.

The purpose of the conference was to organise a discussion on the less known aspects of the post-war history of East and Central European Jews, i.e. the fate of Jewish women, attempts to develop the Jewish culture and academic life, efforts to restore Jewish social and political organizations, the attitude of the USSR and Soviet satellite states’ security services toward organised Jewish life, etc.

The goals were achieved. We managed to organise a fruitful discussion between researchers from eight countries (France, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, UK, USA, Ukraine) who research various topics on the history of East-European Jews in the postwar decade.

An overview of the sections and papers presented during the event and the most significant and productive threads in the papers and discussions

The conference was hosted at the Center for Urban History of East-Central Europe in Lviv. It convened a group of researchers from France, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, UK, USA, Ukraine (both in-person and online).

The security issues were among the highest priorities for the organisers and their partners. Therefore, this wartime event was held in the Center’s basement (exhibition hall before the Russian full-scale invasion), which served as a shelter for the participants in case of missile and drone attacks.

The conference was opened with the opening words by Dr. Vitaly Chernoivanenko, president of the Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies, and Maryana Mazurak, deputy director of the Center for Urban History. Vitaly Chernoivanenko also has read greetings from the EAJS president Prof. Elisabeth Hollender.

After the opening words Prof. Tamás Stark (Institute of History, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary) has given a first keynote lecture “The Fate of Holocaust Survivors in Hungary and Romania.” This lecture was given in person. The following discussion was focused on the possible conflicts between the collective memory of the Holocaust survivors in Hungary and Romania and the official politics of memory in these countries, the grassroots commemoration activities in postwar Hungary, the fate of those Hungarian Jews who were at DP camps after the war and did not return to Hungary.

The first panel (moderated by Vitaly Chernoivanenko, Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, UAJS President; two speakers of this panel participated online and one did it in person) was opened with a paper Sex, Gratitude, and White Lies: Jewish and Non-Jewish Relationships in the Aftermath of the Holocaust presented by Prof. Natalia Aleksiun (University of Florida, USA). She explored the complex relationships between Jewish men and women and their non-Jewish rescuers and helpers with a particular focus on such relationships in Eastern Galicia. The next presentation was given by Prof. Carol Mann (Université Paris 8, France). Its topic was Idealism Betrayed: Communist Jewish Women Facing Post-War Antisemitism in the Eastern Bloc. She examined the problems facing militant Jewish communist women after the war in the Eastern Bloc basing on several cases from Czechoslovakia, East Germany, USSR, Romania, and Poland. The following discussion focused on connection between the Jewishness of Jewish militant women and their militant behavior and the origin of the militant behavior of those Jewish women. The last presentation, Rape and Justice: Female Holocaust Survivors in War Crimes Trials in Soviet Ukraine, was given by Dr. Marta Havryshko (Basel University, Switzerland). She focused on attempts of Jewish women from Soviet Ukraine who survived the Holocaust to seek justice and put on trial the perpetrators of sexual violence against them. The following discussion was related to sentences for sexual crimes against Jewish women (there was not any separate sentence for such crime, all such crimes were examined along with other crimes perpetrated by the same persons), the way the victims of sexual violence were interrogated.

The second panel (moderated by Carol Mann, Université Paris 8) was opened with a presentation by Prof. Brian Horowitz (Tulane University, New Orleans, USA) Saul Borovoi’s Return to Odessa from Central-Asian Evacuation: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. He described the fate of famous Ukrainian-Jewish historian Saul Borovoi after the Second World War and his role in documenting the Holocaust in Odessa region. The following discussion was related to factors that helped Saul Borovoi to survive the Stalin’s antisemitic campaign in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the reasons why Borovoi did not return to the topics in Jewish history and culture when it became possible, and to his possible contacts with his relatives in Israel. The second talk was given by Dr. Jan Miklas-Frankowski (University of Gdańsk, Poland). Its topic was Life of Polish Jews after the catastrophe in Mordechai Tsanin’s “Of Stones and Ruins.” It was devoted to the articles by Jewish journalist Mordechai Tsanin (a correspondent of the New York newspaper “Forverts”) who described the situation in postwar Poland, especially the image of the destroyed Jewish world and the repression of its memory process and. at the same time, the process of restoring Jewish life in Warsaw, Łodź, Kielce, Tarnów, and other Polish cities. The following discussion was related to the similarities between Jewish reportages from postwar Poland and the Polish reportages (reportage was a very popular genre in the Polish literature both before and after the war). The last talk was given by Prof. Eliyana Adler (Pennsylvania State University, USA). Its topic was “I have come back to the place of suffering”: Narratives of Return in Post-War Polish Jewish Memorial Books. It was devoted to memoirs of Jews who survived the Holocaust and returned to Poland after the Second World War (majority of such testimonies were published much later, when their authors left Poland). The authors of such texts described their experience of returning their homes that were not longer their homes. The following discussion was focused on the nature of such memoirs as a genre and their place among other genres of Jewish literary tradition.

The second day of the conference was opened with a second keynote lecture, Negotiating ‘Soviet Jewishness’ after the Holocaust: Remembrance, Reconstruction, and De-/Normalization in Times of Hope and Uncertainty. It was given by Prof. Frank Grüner of the University of Bielefeld, Germany. He focused on the understanding Jewishness in the postwar USSR, the formation of a “Jewish community of fate and interest” in the Soviet Union, the fate of the Soviet Jews in the years of Soviet antisemitic campaigns and after Stalin. The following discussion was focused on the reasons why some leaders of the Jewish Antifascist Committee proposed to create the Jewish republic in Crimea, the features of the non-Ashkenazi Jews’ fate in the postwar Soviet Union.

The third panel was moderated by Prof. Tamás Stark (Institute of History, Hungarian Academy of Sciences). This panel was completely online. The first presentation, Smuggled to Freedom? Orthodox Jewish Rescue Networks in Communist Hungary (1949–1956) by Dr. Attila Novák of the National University for Public Service in Budapest. Unfortunately, Dr. Novák was not able to attend the conference, so he sent the text of his presentation. It was read to participants and guests by another participant — Dr. András Szécsényi from the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security in Budapest. This presentation explored the network of Orthodox Jewry in Budapest that was incorporated into the Budapest Jewish Community (and MIOK – National Representation of Hungarian Israelites) as a section in the early 1950s. The second talk, Fantasy on the Future: Representation of Post-War Hungary in the Diary of Margit Holländer, was given by Dr. Heléna Huhák of the Research Centre for the Humanities at the Excellent Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Budapest, Hungary). It was devoted to the image of postwar Hungary constructed in a diary of one of the Holocaust survivor. The following discussion was focused on the situations in which the author of the cited diary met Soviet POW (in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp) and representatives of other nationalities (in a DP camp after the war), the reflections of the diary’s author on the typhus epidemic in Bergen-Belsen directly after its liberation, the reflection of the process of magyarization of the Hungarion Jews in the cited diary. The last paper was given by Dr. András Szécsényi from the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security. Its topic was Lost in Europe. Experiences of Hungarian Jewish Survivors of Bergen-Belsen after the Liberation (1945–1947). In his talk, the speaker explored how the members of the liberated inmates lived in “half freedom” in German DP camps and in Swedish sanatoria right after the liberation and in the first post-war year. presentation was based mainly on the survivors’ ego-documents (testimonies, interviews and diaries) and the National Committee for Attending Deportees’ [DEGOB] protocols, also using the press and archival sources. The following discussion was focused on the cases of marriages and having children in DP camps, social and cultural life in DP camps.

The fourth panel was moderated by Vitaly Chernoivanenko. One of its paper was given in person and two were given online. The topic of the first presentation was Ukrainian Architects in the Context of the Post-War Antisemitic Campaign. It was given by Serhiy Hirik (State Research Institution “Encyclopedia Press” and the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Ukraine). Researcher described the features of the antisemitic policy against architects of Jewish origin in Soviet Ukraine in the late 1940s in comparison with such policy against representatives of other professional groups. The following discussion related to the series of organised meetings of various artistic and professional communities in 1949, the factors that influenced on relatively soft policy against architects of Jewish origin. The second presentation, The Activity of ‘the Joint’ in Mukachevo in 1944–1945 and the Soviet Attitude Toward It in 1953, was given by Mikhail Mitsel (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, USA). It was related to the only case of the Joint Distribution Committee’s activity in postwar Ukraine — in Soviet controlled Mukachevo before the ultimate annexation of the Transcarpathian region by the USSR. The following discussion was focused on the process of russification of those local Jews who did not leave the region and their possible contacts with Soviet Jewish intelligentsia in other regions of Soviet Ukraine. The last paper, Honor Court: Jews in Poland Take Stock after the Holocaust, was given by Prof. Gabriel Finder (University of Virginia, USA). In his talk, Prof. Finder described the history of communal honor courts in Poland, especially the honor court of the Central Committee of Jews of Poland.

The conference was concluded by the Young Researchers’ Seminar. Its moderator was Serhiy Hirik. The first paper was presented by Tetiana Shyshkina from Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, Germany. Its topic was Judaica in the Newspapers “Litaratura i Mastatstvo” (BSSR), “Literatura i Mystetstvo”, “Literaturna Hazeta”, and “Radianske Mystetstvo” (UkrSSR). She focused the problems raised by the authors of publications on Jewish art and literature in the abovementioned newspapers. The following discussion was focused on the identification of the person who collected the cuts from those newspapers and the total number of such publications. The next paper was given Uliana Kyrchiv of the Ukrainian Catholic University on Lviv. Its topic was Galician Jew Between Warsaw and Paris: Dynamics of Piotr Rawicz’s Relations with the PRL. The following discussion was related to the correspondence between the Ukrainian émigré historian Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky and Piotr Rawicz. The last talk was given by Krystian Propola (University of Rzeszów, Poland). Its topic was Cultivating the Memory of the Fate of Soviet Jews During World War II in the First Post-War Years in Light of Contemporary Russian-Language Jewish Media. The following discussion was related to the criteria of defining any precise media as Jewish.

Changes to the Original Programme

There were several changes to the original programme. Prof. Tamás Stark (Budapest, Hungary) has changed the topic of his keynote lecture. He has given a talk “The Fate of Holocaust Survivors in Hungary and Romania.” Also the moderator of the first panel was changed (it was moderated by Vitaly Chernoivanenko since Prof. Frank Grüner was not able to moderate this panel). One of the speakers of the third panel (Dr. Attila Novák) was not able to participate. He has sent his paper and it was read by another participant (Dr. András Szécsényi). One of the planned speakers of the Young Researchers’ Seminar (Alicja Podbielska) did not participate in the conference.

Event programme (Sections and Papers)

https://uajs.org.ua/sites/default/files/Program-UAJS_Jews-of-East-Central_2023_0.pdf

A statement about planned outcomes (projects, future workshops, collaborations) and outputs (publications)

Planned Outcomes

The conference contributed to the development of relationships between researchers from European countries (France, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, UK, USA, Ukraine) who works on the topics on the history of the post-war Jewish life in East-Central Europe. The fruitful discussions during the conference also contributed to the research on less known aspects of Jewish history in Central and Eastern Europe.

Outputs

The detailed descriptions of the event will be published in the “Chronicles” sections of the journals Judaica Ukrainica (by Dr. Carol Mann) and Eastern European Holocaust Studies (by Prof. Tamás Stark). Some participants have given their papers for publication in the forthcoming volume of Judaica Ukrainica.

All the presentations were filmed and will be published on the UAJS YouTube Channel.

Publicity:

UAJS website:

https://uajs.org.ua/en/news/registration-uajs-conferences-march-27-30-2023-now-open

https://uajs.org.ua/uk/news/reestraciya-gostey-na-naukovi-konferencii-uayu-lviv-27-30-bereznya-2023

https://uajs.org.ua/uk/node/698

https://uajs.org.ua/en/node/698

Center for Urban History of East Central Europe website:

https://www.lvivcenter.org/en/updates/jews-after-catastrophe-2/

https://www.lvivcenter.org/updates/jews-after-catastrophe/

Research Center for the Humanities at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences:

https://tti.abtk.hu/160-esemenyek/konferencia/5208-konferencia-az-ovohelyen

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.6344904562199508&type=3

YouTube: All the presentations were filmed. They will be soon published on the UAJS YouTube channel.

Participants’ feedbacks:

Carol Mann, Ph.D, Research Associate, Université de Paris 8:

Regarding the conference held in Lviv 27-28 March 2023 entitled Jews of East-Central Europe after the Catastrophe: Multiplicity of Experiences, 1945–1956, I wish to congratulate Vitaly Chernoivanenko and Serhiy Hirik for having organised such an interesting and successful conference under such difficult circumstances.

I found the whole venture extremely brave and coherent with what Judaism (for me) has always stood for: study, scholarship and intellectual development even in the most impossible situations.

Whilst drones and missiles were raining on the country, the organisers managed to get together a group of papers on a vital topic, post-war Jewish life in Eastern and Central Europe. The variety of presentations and their sheer quality was impressive. It was also important to give the floor for a whole session to young scholars.

Admittedly, because of the war conditions and the fear, few people turned up in person. I was fortunate enough to be one of them. So the majority of contributions were on line, in Covid-conditions in a basement-cum-shelter

The Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies is truly an important basis for research and reflection and one can only hope that it will continue to develop further in more peaceful times- what we saw in the middle of a war was already impressive.