UW-Madison Center for Russia, East Europe and Central Asia (CREECA)

Polish-Jewish Memory
Fifty Years After March ’68:
A Challenge Map
Wisconsin Slavic Conference Keynote Lecture

From the CREECA website: At the center of my attention, I place a series of events that I consider symptomatic of the shortcomings of the current discourse on Polish-Jewish memory, namely the 2018 commemorations of March 1968. Over half a century ago, the so-called March ’68 events led to the forced emigration of several thousand Polish Jews and their families. I argue that the cultural memory of the campaign in postcommunist Poland reveals Polish society’s unacknowledged anxieties—about Polish-Jewish relations and about the memory and legacy of the entire communist era—that haunt Poland today. I show how the commemorations triggered a conflation of anxieties about the Polish-Jewish relationship in 1968 with anxieties about the implication (à la Michael Rothberg) of ordinary citizens in the communist system (and its politics of memory) with anxieties regarding the Holocaust. I show how the positivistic hope that difficult pasts can be reasoned with by mere historical revisions to their (referential) history has often proved futile; I argue for a more nuanced set of analytical tools to help postcommunist societies orient themselves with respect to their multiple and unfinished pasts.

About the speaker: Dr. Joanna Niżyńska.

Location: UW-Madison Campus 
206 Ingraham Hall, 1155 Observatory Dr.
Map: https://goo.gl/maps/LFRbcGs1rbv