Local, National and Transnational. Jewish Agency and the Holocaust Commemorations in 1960s Poland

Online talk by Janek Gryta (University of Southampton). 

It has been observed that in the run-up to 1968, Communist Polish authorities were in thrall to a vision of a ‘Zionist international’ plotting to overshadow Polish suffering during World War II by focusing on the Holocaust instead. There was, obviously, no nefarious plot. However, as this talk will reveal, in the 1960s local, national and transnational Jewish activists fought hard for at least a modicum of recognition of the Jewish tragedy. Indeed, they succeeded in erecting dozens of monuments in Holocaust-by-bullets sites and had some impact on the shape of memorials such as Treblinka.

Janek Gryta is a Lecturer in Holocaust History at the University of Southampton. He is a cultural and social historian with particular interests in Holocaust commemorations in Eastern Europe, nation-building, and the history of social consensus in Communist states.