Microhistories of the Holocaust in Nazi-Occupied Poland

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

In recent years, historians of the Holocaust turned to micro-history as an important methodological tool for examining the killing fields in Eastern Europe. Their new approach led to shifting the focus from perpetrators and extermination camps to the victims and their hometowns. The relationships with non-Jews in local communities were explored anew as well as Jewish agency in the survival process.

The papers in the panel focus on close reading of these East European hometowns and are united by their methodological micro-historical approach. Each paper explores a different town: Lubartów, Lwów, Tarnów, and Olkusz, and analyzes Jewish agency and survival strategies in these urban contexts. The papers examine various aspects of the relationship with the non-Jewish neighbors, whose role went far beyond the accepted “bystander” paradigm. In particular, gender offers a lens that reveals the complex relationship between helpers and Jews. This panel will bring together scholars at various stages in their career: doctoral students, junior and senior faculty from Germany, France, United States, Canada and Poland.

Beyond the study of four towns, this panel will offer new insights into the social and interpersonal mechanisms that prevailed in occupied societies in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust. It will foster a deeper understanding of the power relations within different victim groups in local communities in occupied Poland and ask how the Holocaust affected these communities after the war ended. It will raise questions about the paradigm shifts generated by micro-historical studies of the Holocaust.

Sub Unit

• History: Central and Southeast Europe, Since 1918

Chair

• Piotr J. Wrobel, U of Toronto (Canada)

Papers

• Surviving the Holocaust in Lubartów: Combining Micro-Historic and Quantitative Approaches - Thomas Chopard, CNRS-EHESS (France); Franciszek Zakrzewski, Independent Scholar

• Jewish Agency in Survival and Relationships with the non-Jewish Local Population, the Case of Tarnów - Agnieszka Wierzcholska, Freie U Berlin (Germany)

• Microhistory of Emotions: The Afterlife of War-Time Relationships in Lwów - Natalia Aleksiun, Touro College

• Clearing the Rubble: The Poles and the Jewish Traces in One Small Polish Town after the War - Yechiel Weizman, Leibniz Inst for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow (Germany)